Back to School 2013: School supplies more expensive in the UK than France and Germany

A standard basket can cost twice as much as a bargain basket

Paris, 27th August 2013 – In preparation for the back-to-school season, Twenga publishes a yearly study on the price of school supplies found online. The comparison site takes a basket of 16 basic items used in British, French and German schools, and analyses 195,064 online offers by comparing 2 different price ranges. The ‘standard’ basket distinguishes prices that are most easily found on the market, while the ‘bargain’ basket corresponds to the lower range, which can be found by comparing products.

In the UK, Twenga found that a standard basket of school supplies costs £212 compared to a bargain basket at £108, which is nearly half the price. Therefore by comparing different prices, British consumers can save up to 49% when buying school equipment.

The difference is a bit less in France (a 46% saving), where the average price sits in the middle for the 3 countries. Here, a standard basket costs £172 (19% cheaper than the UK) compared to a bargain basket at £92 (around 14% cheaper than the UK).

However it is in Germany where the price of school equipment is the cheapest: £125 for a standard basket and only £75 for a bargain basket.

METHODOLOGY

The study is based on a basket of 16 basic school items, used by students and marketed simultaneously across Germany, France and the UK. The items include: ballpoint pens, fountain pens, pencils, pencil erasers, binders, ink eraser, drawing compasses, A4 notebooks, pencil cases, school bags, glue sticks, academic diaries, children's scissors, scientific calculators, rulers, set squares.

For 2013, the study is based on 195,064 products available on the French (55,886 offers), the German (88,343 offers) and the British (50,836 offers) Twenga site.

To calculate the standard priced basket shown in its study, Twenga calculated the median price for each of the 16 product categories and added them together. The bargain priced basket represents the prices from the lower price range and has been obtained by adding the first quartile calculated for each of the 16 product categories. Twenga uses the median price to avoid the data becoming biased by extreme cases.

ABOUT TWENGA

Founded in 2006 by Bastien Duclaux and Cédric Anès, Twenga is the most comprehensive shopping search engine on the internet. Twenga employs 100 collaborators in Paris and London. In launching affinitAD in 2011, Twenga opened its intelligent shopping expertise to a new audience: content sites.

With its unique technology, Twenga automatically assembles products from online shops facilitating both searches and comparisons.

Available in 15 countries, Twenga offers access to 300 million products from 200,000 online shops. Twenga enables millions of consumers from around the world to find what they’re looking for at the best price from the online shop of their choice.

Website: http://www.twenga.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/twenga_uk

PRESS CONTACT

Twenga
38 rue du Sentier
75002 Paris
Tel: +33(0)1 55 34 97 58
press@twenga.com

This release was published on openPR.