A study carried out by Minderest, the price intelligence firm, shows that John Lewis, the British giant, and Amazon, are the most competitive retailers when buying a mobile phone.
A sample of 133 mobile phones in stock in Amazon UK and Google Shopping were analysed on 12th of April, simulating what a consumer would find looking for an online mobile phone. The sellers captured via Google Shopping with the most offers were: John Lewis, Currys, Debenhams Plus, Very, Laptops Direct, AO, Argos, BT Shop, Ebuyer, LambdaTek, Egenisys, Buyur, More Computers, SmartTeck, Littlewoods and Digital Outlet. Prices of the different Amazon sellers have been ignored, and we chose only the Amazon price.
The results
For each of the products, the cheapest price found in any of the companies mentioned above was recorded. Using this cheapest price, the percentage difference has been calculated with respect to each of the comparative sellers, obtaining the following results, where John Lewis leads the ranking being only 3.46% more expensive than the cheapest price:
1. John Lewis & Partners 3,46%
2. Amazon 4,26%
3. Currys 6,72%
4. Debenhams Plus 6,93%
5. Very 7,40%
6. Laptops Direct 8,53%
7. AO 9,12%
8. Argos 10,97 %
9. BT Shop 11,35%
10. Ebuyer.com 12,67%
11. LambdaTek 13,62%
12. Egenisys 15,26%
13. Buyur 15,35%
14. More Computers 22,71%
15. SmartTeck.co.uk 29,71%
16. Littlewoods 39,17%
17. Digital Outlet UK 40,99%
Specifically, the maximum saving that someone could obtain by comparing prices between these online sellers would be 37.36%, which is the average difference between the cheapest and the most expensive price found for each of the products.
After making this comparison, the most surprising result has been the price difference of 37.27% for the same article between Digital Outlet, here having the most expensive price, and the giant John Lewis who were joint-cheapest with both BT Shop and AO. While the latter were priced at £279, for the HONOR 10 128GB Mobile Phone, in Glacier Grey, this same phone in Digital Outlet cost over £440.00.