RedMart and Sheng Siong turned on per-unit grocery pricing in their mobile apps from Thursday, the first time Singapore’s unit-pricing pilot reaches online baskets under Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore rules.
How the feature renders
Selected categories—staples, frozen protein, diapers and detergents among them—now show a secondary line with price per kilogram, litre or piece beneath the headline SKU price. Nurul Aziz’s technology desk tested RedMart’s interface on a 2.5-kilo rice bag and a 900-millilitre cooking oil bottle; the per-unit line updates when quantity steppers change, but promotional bundles sometimes lag by a few minutes after midnight price refreshes.
Sheng Siong’s app mirrors the logic for home-delivery slots in heartland estates. Other chains promised “progressive” online rollout without dates, leaving omnichannel shoppers with uneven data.
Engineering and catalogue pain
Unit pricing online is harder than slapping tags on shelves. SKU masters must store net content, unit of measure and tax flags so APIs can compute comparisons when house-brand packs change weight without changing barcodes. RedMart’s marketplace listings add complexity when third-party sellers omit standard weights.
CCS hired Blackbox to survey digital shoppers separately from store visitors. If app users ignore per-unit lines, regulators may conclude that mandating online labels is low yield.
Privacy and personalisation
Showing unit prices does not require new permissions, but grocers already use basket data for recommendations. Clear per-unit lines could clash with “buy again” nudges that push smaller, higher-margin packs. Engineers must ensure sort-by-unit-price does not become a default that upsets supplier marketing rebates.
What shoppers should do
Toggle quantity before comparing multipacks. Check whether delivery fees erase per-kilo savings on heavy rice sacks. Until every operator is live online, screenshot tags in-store when a deal looks too good on app-exclusive promos.
Accessibility and offline shoppers
Screen readers must parse per-unit lines as secondary text without cluttering voice-over flows; both apps tested TalkBack and VoiceOver during beta, though CCS did not publish accessibility benchmarks. Offline shoppers who rely on family members to order groceries should ask helpers to screenshot per-unit lines when substituting brands.
Marketplace sellers on RedMart who omit net weights may be delisted from the pilot categories until catalogue data is fixed, a enforcement lever physical stores cannot replicate.