Supermarket (09/10/2024)

The term “supermarket” apparently refers to a retail format that pursues the sale of high-frequency groceries and daily necessities through self-service, short-run, and low-cost sales (in Japan, at least).

Even among discount stores, the characteristics vary from store to store, as shown below.

- Bento (boxed lunches) are extremely inexpensive, but beware of damaged perishable foods (e.g., Super Tamade).

- Meat and preserved foods are very inexpensive, but the prices of fruits are high (e.g., Meat Hanamasa).

- Stores where the regular price is not cheap, but at 10:00 p.m., bento boxed meals are discounted to half price, so bargain hunters gather at that time of the day.

- Some supermarkets that have an identity of being inexpensive also have upscale stores like Seijo Ishii, and celebrities are said to visit these stores.

I stop by the supermarket on my way home to buy ingredients and make a simple dinner at home.

Last month, I once visited a chain supermarket called “OK Store” a short distance away from the city of Kasai. 

Compared to the "Tobu Store", "Y's Mart", and "My Basket" in front of Kasai Station, where I usually stop by, the store was larger and more densely populated. 

The atmosphere was unique, filled with the atmosphere of people enjoying their shopping, which is peculiar to stores like these that target customers who have traveled a few kilometers by car.

What is sold in supermarkets, and at what price? The following data from Statistics Bureau of Japan is useful for this question.

The following data is a list of numbers that are easy to visualize, such as “price per 100g”.

For example, although we had heard that the catch of saury was plentiful in Hokkaido from summer to October this year, the price was not much lower than last year.

There is another data such as “the price in 2024 expressed as a ratio of the price in 2020 to 100,” which makes it easier to make comparisons such as “4% higher than in the previous year.

<https://www.e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search/files?page=1&layout=datalist&toukei=00200571&tstat=000000680001&cycle=1&year=20240&month=23070908&result_back=1&tclass1val=0>

There was a worldwide trend of logistics stagnation and rising prices after the coronary pneumonia epidemic a few years ago, but there was a large time lag before prices rose in Japan.

For nearly 20 years, it was unthinkable that the price of things would go up, but now notices of price increases are posted in supermarkets everywhere, and the effects are slowly being felt.