HIGH MARKS EARNED BY SHOPRITE STORE FOR 99.5% SCANNING ACCURACY SCORE

DENISE ZIMMERMAN

BENSALEM, Pa. -- Wakefern Food Corp.'s ShopRite store here earned high marks for scan accuracy late last month when the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association, Camp Hill, Pa., granted certification in its voluntary auditing program.

The store's average scan accuracy rating of 99.5% was validated by inspectors who randomly selected 200 items to check prices in a recent store visit. Auditors also examined store signs for clarity and placement as well as cashier training and handling of products whose Universal Product Codes are not on file in the point-of-sale system.

"I'm not aware of another supermarket in the Philadelphia market that's in the program, so it becomes a competitive advantage for us to tell customers we scan accurately," said Mark Laurenti, ShopRite store

operator.

"And the store people are now vigilant" about price integrity "because they know I'm vigilant," he added.

Wakefern's store is among 200 in the state, operated by various retailers, that have been certified in the association's voluntary Scanning Certification Program. Pathmark Stores, Woodbridge, N.J., and Penn Traffic's Riverside division, DuBois, Pa., reportedly have taken the first steps to get involved in the program.

ShopRite's Laurenti said additional measures have been taken in the store to ensure that prices at the shelf are the same as those loaded into the scanning system. Extra emphasis is placed upon checking signs in the frozen food cases and nonfood promotional items.

In addition, the store installed two stand-alone price verification units from Bass, Dayton, Ohio. The devices are used by both staff and shoppers for convenient price checking.

"Anyone can check the price of an item against what the sign says, so [the units] have been a wonderful help in the store and the customers love them," Laurenti said.

The ShopRite unit intends to emphasize to shoppers in-store and in advertising circulars that it insists on a high level of pricing accuracy and its efforts have been formally recognized through the program.

"It tells the customer we are very serious about being accurate in our pricing," he added.

Although consumer media reports on price accuracy in supermarkets routinely focus on overcharges, data gathered by the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association tells another story. The frequency and dollar value of undercharges consistently outpaces that of overcharges among those stores certified by the program, according to Randy St. John, vice president of membership development.

Program participants averaged scan accuracy of 98.58% based on 200 randomly selected items for price verification. The data, updated last month, broke out the 1.42% of scan errors in the following manner: 0.91% were undercharges, 0.40% were overcharges and 0.11% of errors were attributed to the absence of shelf tags.

Further, the average value of undercharges was 40 cents compared with the average overcharge of 30 cents, St. John said.

The statistics are based on pricing audits of stores participating in the Scanning Certification program, he pointed out, and may differ from state inspection figures because auditing practices vary widely.

For example, the association's voluntary program uses random sampling of products storewide for price checking; by contrast, state inspectors may use "stratified" sampling practices that focus on notoriously problematic areas such as direct-store-delivery sections and promotional items.