I was reading an online article the other day, and it mentioned that there’s a new portal in town. This portal, which is known as SmartPengguna.my, allows consumers to compare prices at hypermarkets. Currently, there are five hypermarkets that are participating in this portal – Mydin, Tesco, Giant, Jusco and Carrefour. My first thought was, why is the name of the portal an English word combined with a Malay word? As I read through some parts of the website, I had the feeling that there were grammatical errors scattered here and there. For example, the sentence on the landing page that was in big black letters: “The only website in the world that display daily prices directly from supermarkets & hypermarkets!”. Erm, shouldn’t it be displayS with an s? Even if they change it later on, I’ve got a screenshot to prove it!

Anyway, I went to the website to check it out. Well, it’s clean and simple, but that’s OK. Normally application websites should be simple, not overly cluttered with design. On the right, there’s a space for a user login … but no place to sign up as a user. Hmm, that’s strange…who is the login for, then?

You can choose one branch from each hypermarket for comparison purposes, and there’s also a category listing to select which products you want to compare. I selected a few basic products, and here’s my results.

I’m not sure how accurate the results are, it would be interesting to take note of the prices and then go to the hypermarkets to check it out. According to the site, the prices are updated daily. Interesting to note, some of the Tesco items had red plus signs next to them, which states that “Dijamin Tiada Ketandingan”, but upon comparison, it’s the most expensive of all the hypermarkets!

I wonder how useful this site is, will consumers actually use it? For me, I don’t go grocery shopping (unless it’s for the office, or for my own snacks) and I don’t see myself using this portal. The selection of products are the most basic, and the items I would buy are not listed down there. I’m definitely not their target market! It was interesting to take a look at, but I doubt I’d go back for more.

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