Three Supermarkets Spell One Brand Three Ways, So My Price Comparison Never Happened
Visas pay my bills — I run an agency in Bali. The other half of my week goes into Apify Actors, and one of them reads the three Australian supermarkets in one run: ask for full cream milk and you get what Coles sells, what Woolworths sells and what ALDI sells, in the same columns. I assumed the hard part would be getting in. It partly is — Coles sits behind a bot check — but Woolworths answers…
A single supermarket's price comparison tool faltered due to inconsistent brand and product naming conventions across three major Australian retailers: Coles, Woolworths, and ALDI. The tool, designed to display the same product's prices from all three chains side-by-side, encountered issues interpreting brand names and product sizes.
For instance, a2 full cream milk was listed differently by each store: Coles used "a2 Milk a2 Milk Full Cream Milk", Woolworths used "a2 a2 Milk Full Cream 2L", and ALDI used "A2 THE A2 MILK COMPANY A2 THE A2 MILK COMPANY A2 Full Cream Milk 2L". By cleaning up brand names through a set of standard keywords, the tool was able to accurately compare and display prices for the same product from multiple retailers, revealing valuable cost-saving opportunities.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
