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Web Sites Direct Consumers to Local Bargains

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 December 2005, 06:00 CST

Sick of clipping coupons and combing circulars? Several new Web sites let shoppers compare local bargains without ever leaving the Internet.

At Cairo.com, shoppers can compare advertised prices and receive alerts when prices drop.

Similar to Craig's List, which offers online classified advertisements, Cairo is based in San Francisco but zones local content. Users type in their ZIP codes, and the site directs them to circulars from area stores.

Home goods, electronics and food have been the most popular customer searches, said Matt Hurwitz, a spokesman.

"You're going to get the same information you would find in circulars, the same information as on (retailers') Web sites," Hurwitz said. "This is just an aggregated list."

Similar sites include Froogle, which is powered by Google, and ShopLocal LLC, which partners with retailers and newspapers.

GroceryGame.com finds sales at grocery stores and tells shoppers whether they can boost their savings with a coupon. The site also tracks price cycles, so shoppers know whether to stock up or hold off.

The trend is "inspired by the overall transparency that the Internet brings," said Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.Org, the online extension of retail trade group the National Retail Federation.

If the sites make shopping less confusing and broaden retailers' customer bases, they make sense, he said. "Whether or not it's doing that, I can't really say," Silverman said.

Most of the sites have started within the past couple of years, and some have received a complete overhaul in recent months. Each has a different model for producing revenue.

Cairo.com started with venture capital and hopes retailers eventually will advertise on its Web pages.

Retailers that advertise on the site will not be given preferential treatment in product searches, but they could offer coupons or other targeted promotions, Hurwitz said.

"There's a lot of opportunity for those retailers," he said. "They just have to buy in."

Advertising on the sites would make sense for retailers, because it's cheaper than buying space in newspapers or on television and more targeted to the consumers they want to reach, said H. Raghav Rao, who teaches e-commerce at New York State University at Buffalo.

But Rao said no site could garner all of its revenue from advertisements. Eventually retailers likely will pay to be included in searches of the sites, Rao said.

GroceryGame charges users subscription fees, which start at $10 for eight weeks of service. The site offers a four-week trial for $1.

GroceryGame publicizes both advertised and unadvertised deals at chains nationwide, including Schnuck Markets Inc. in the St. Louis area. It also has a database of about 10,000 items at each of the grocery chains the site follows. The database tells shoppers when prices are at their lowest.

Founder Teri Gault said those features and others make the service worth the price. "Our members are going out there and saving a lot more than a $1.25 a week," Gault said.

A Schnucks spokeswoman described the sites as an "interesting concept." Cairo.com expects to add Schnucks, Dierbergs Markets Inc. and Shop `n Save to its site early next year.

"It's really up to the customer to determine whether it's useful," said Schnucks spokeswoman Lori Willis.

Shoppers already can find published deals in newspaper circulars, Willis noted.

And she questioned whether any Web site can fully explain in-store specials or the differences between Schnucks' products and its competitors.

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(c) 2005, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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