Information gathering on family shopping

Today, Jochanan and Lirim went to Baden to ask people on how often they go shopping in general. With that kind of information we are now able to calculate an approximate percentage of savings compared CH/DE. The problem was because it was during the week, the interviewed people were mostly larger families (two kids or more). So it was hard to find people without children or singles.
As a solution, we asked our friends and relatives for their shopping attitude. What we gathered from our questionnaire was that families go shopping more frequently in average once a week for big grocery shopping. And singles go on a big shopping-spree every other week.
 We also asked what kind of products are always on their shopping lists and in what amounts. The majority bought an average amount of 4-5 litres of milk per head per week, 150g of pasta per head per week, 150g of rice per head per week, package of ten eggs per week which were mostly battery farmed eggs.
On items like potatoes or other vegetables, we didn't get exact numbers because the amount would vary a lot. We had a problem with measuring the amount of bread consumed, because the individuals like to buy the bread the night before, so that it's fresh.

In the meantime Primo is still in Shanghai.

Questionnaire in Waldshut

Because Primo has left to Shanghai, Lirim and Jochanan will have to take over a part of his work and do other tasks like this questionnaire in  a smaller group. It shouldn't be a big problem, because it isn't very hard work, just more time-consuming.

We went to Germany and asked the local people in front of Kaufland about their opinion on the so called "shopping tourists". We asked them questions like: If they felt exploited by the Swiss, since they don't even have to pay taxes to the German government unlike the locals.

The opinions were very diverse, some people had big problems with the Swiss and felt shame, just because it made Germany look cheap. But most of the people that were open, didn't mind at all because they knew that many Germans work in Switzerland and live in Germany and do also save a big amount of money.

Unfortunately quite a few people weren't in the mood to talk with us about this phenomena. We assume that locals feel exploited and that may be a factor why they don't want to talk about it.
But from this we learnt that not everyone appreciates the "shopping tourists", even though it isn't happening on a large scale in Waldshut compared to Konstanz or Weil am Rhein.

Price checking in Aldi/Lidl in Switzerland

Today Jochanan went to compare the prices in Lidl in Wettingen while Primo went to Aldi in Wettingen. While comparing a few prices we noticed that the stores in Wettingen were a lot smaller than in Waldshut. While looking for the exact same products, I sometimes had to look for similar ones, because they weren't available. So what we both did, was take the cheapest product we saw and compared it to the cheapest product in Germany with the same genre. Since it is the cheapest product available in the country, we felt that this is a good comparison. Another problem was nationalism supported in both shops. The two Supermarket chains supported local businesses, so the meat and bread was made in Switzerland, which of course made a massive difference on the meat prices, which were twice or even three times as high as in Germany. A surprising factor was, that in Aldi water was cheaper in Switzerland, even without the depot that you pay in Germany. 19 Cents per litre in Germany and 16 Rappen in Switzerland. 

In Aldi in Wettingen, especially in the beauty product section, a lot of products were not sold in the store like dove deodorants and shampoos.

So next time we would probably write down the Swiss prices, before comparing them to the German prices. 

While Jochanan and Primo went price-listing, Lirim researched the exact taxation laws in Germany.

Next time we will try to create a map and find out how much you save on a regular shopping tour when going to Germany instead of Switzerland.

Shopping in Germany Round 2

Before we went shopping in Germany again, we had a conversation with out supervisor Ms Frei. She told us what we could do to get a more accurate price difference between the shops in Switzerland and Germany. So we took her advice and went to Aldi and Lidl in Waldshut.

There we noted down from all product ranges one product each. With some articles we weren't sure if those were also sold in Switzerland. So what we did to fix that problem is write down the brands and noted down multiple products of various brands.

On our way home we measured the time. It took us 28 minutes to get to the Kanti from Lidl with minor traffic jams.

We all learnt that the meat was extremely cheap and bought a few kilograms of chicken. The layout of the shops was pretty much the same as in an Aldi or Lidl at home, so we had no problems finding our way through the shop(s).