Online hawker-food price guide to deter profiteering

By Tessa Wong, ST

Consumers will be able to find out how much their favourite hawker dish should cost by visiting the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case) website from next month.

The average prices of 10 popular dishes by area will be listed, which means consumers will be able to compare prices of cooked food. The guide will also list the stalls with the highest and lowest prices for each dish.

To gather this data, over 30 ‘mystery shoppers’ will fan out across the island for two weeks next month.

Case president Yeo Guat Kwang said this will not only make prices more transparent and enable consumers to make better choices, but it will also deter hawkers from profiteering.

He said Case did not know how widespread profiteering was, so the survey would ‘give us an understanding of the magnitude of the problem’.

He said the consumer watchdog was concerned that some hawkers – claiming the need to cover the rising cost of raw ingredients such as rice and noodles – are getting away with charging exorbitant prices.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry has disclosed that more hawkers have raised their prices in the last two months: 65 per cent are holding their prices steady, down from 75 per cent two months ago.

The ministry conducts price checks on 1,271 randomly chosen stalls in hawker centres and markets. Every two weeks, it dispatches about half a dozen officers to check for price increases at these stalls.

Case has received 14 public complaints regarding overcharging at hawker centres and coffee shops since the start of the year – against 38 such complaints for the whole of last year.

Besides publishing cooked-food prices, Case plans to help consumers battle the rising cost of living by making its annual publication of grocery prices a monthly affair from this month.

The survey, which establishes baseline prices for common household items and groceries in supermarkets here, will also be published online and updated for the next four to six months.

Mr Seah Seng Choon, Case’s executive director, said: ‘Right now, market prices are changing rapidly. So we are trying to keep our data up to date.’

Why shop alone if you can spree?

By Tan Weizhen, ST

Drawn by the prospect of big savings, a growing number of Singapore Internet users are banding together for online buying binges.

Industry players have seen an increase in so-called shopping spree websites that let netizens pool their orders and get big discounts on a raft of online buys.

A Straits Times check found at least 15 active Singapore Internet forums geared towards sprees. Many more smaller blogs have also issued a call to arms for online shoppers looking for clothes, bags, cosmetics and even food.

At any one time, up to 20 sprees are open on each site, some closing once the orders hit a cap of $400. That is when the 7 per cent goods and services tax sets in.

Spree participants said buying in big groups means they save money on shipping costs and get bulk discounts.

The process is fairly simple. A spree organiser posts a thread or blog entry calling for other participants to join the mass order, usually for an overseas website. Buyers write in with their wish lists and send the organiser their money via online banking.

Within three weeks or so, the items arrive and the organiser mails them to participants or meets them to dole out bigger items.

While sprees have become popular, there are dangers to handing money over to strangers.

One Singapore spree organiser was arrested last year for fleeing with participants’ money. Chew Kiew Cheng was collared in October following a scheme in which buyers were cheated of $11,245. In February, Chew was jailed 24 months for the offence.

The Straits Times also found some dodgy sprees organised by overseas websites that sold pirated bags. Two such sites hawked imitations of popular brands such as Chanel, Gucci and Hermes.

That has not dampened the enthusiasm of many online shoppers.

Lawyer Elizabeth Xue, 25, said sprees are hassle free and the good variety of sprees on one website suits her busy schedule.

‘The organisers do everything for me. I don’t have to liaise with overseas websites, which can get very troublesome,’ she said.

Spree organisers here are not looking to make money but want to save on their own online shopping, according to five who spoke to the The Straits Times.

Student Ler Kar Leng, 19, started 10 blogs with different spree themes because she ‘loves to shop for different things from many sites’.

Such sprees are so popular, ST701, the online classifieds arm of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), and online shopping service Comgateway will launch a portal for spree-seekers in the second week of next month.

Called ST701 Spree, it will be hosted on www.ST701.com and plans to offer ‘a few hundred’ online American merchants for a start.

ST701 said the website will come without the risks of spree-ing with unknown parties.

Said Ms Elsie Chua, executive vice-president of SPH’s classified advertising department: ‘Often, the shoppers don’t know the real identity of organisers, who could run away with their money. ST701 offers online shoppers a secure platform.’

Swop & Safe

By Alex Liam, ST

We may be living in a ‘throwaway’ world but the Internet has helped revive an old-fashioned practice, even among the young: barter.

YouSwop, a Singapore-based website set up in August last year to allow people to swop things they did not want for something else, is proving to be a hit.

The website has been gaining popularity, with some 6,000 members joining in just the past six months. Teenagers make up 35 per cent of the crowd.

Membership is free.

‘This idea works because people want to barter away things they bought on impulse which others might find more useful,’ says Mr Patrick Lim, 32, co-founder and manager of the website.

Members put up notices informing others about items they want to swop. The site is popular because of its flexibility: There can be a direct swop between two parties.

Or, a member can ’sell’ an item to someone else for YouSwop dollars (YS$). The value of any item is up to the seller.

The virtual credit earned can then be used to buy other items on the ’swopping board’.

The actual exchange of items takes place through postal delivery or a direct meeting at a location agreeable to both parties. Postage charges are usually borne by the seller.

Young adults and teenagers who spoke to The Sunday Times like the website.

Ms Ivy Tan, 21, is one such fan. The undergraduate from Nanyang Technological University usually swops clothes, vouchers and books for bags and collectibles.

She joined YouSwop in January, after a friend told her about the site.

‘It’s novel, and the fact that it’s virtually cashless helps me to keep tabs on my spending. I get a fresh supply of items I want to use without shelling out any cash,’ she says.

The swopping facility has since evolved to include contests in which members can win movie tickets.

Members like this feature too.

‘This site totally feeds my need for a great bargain,’ Ivy says with a laugh.

Another member who is fast becoming a regular YouSwop user is 16-year-old Hazel Tan. The Methodist Girls’ Secondary student joined the website in December last year.

She admits that she is a shopper who buys things ‘on impulse’ quite often.

Hazel feels that the concept of passing on unwanted but still useful items to someone else is sensible.

‘Just throwing away such items is wasteful. Giving them to those who want or need them makes sense.

‘Besides, doing this earns me credits to get other items I want, which is good for people with limited cash like me,’ she says.

The website even has a feedback system which allows people to find out who are the reliable swoppers.

Site manager Mr Lim, a business consultant, admits that he had not expected YouSwop to become so successful.

He had started it with two friends simply as a nifty way to get rid of excess goods on their hands.

However, they soon realised it was a great way of helping the green movement – as the website’s popularity increased, mainly by word of mouth.

‘It became clear that we were doing something similar to recycling, basically helping the environment while leaving everyone satisfied,’ he says.

Mr Lim hopes that the young people who use his website will one day bring swopping to a greater level.

He says with a grin: ‘In future, these young people will influence others about swopping. It might become a popular culture, even a norm.’

Still, the swopping website has its share of problems.

There have been cases, for example, where one person has not kept to his part of the bargain in the swop. Mr Lim and his ever vigilant team will then swoop in to mediate.

Besides YouSwop, another site, sgfreecycle.com, works on a different model – no barter trade is involved here.

Members dispose of items they no longer want. Other members indicate their interest on a first come, first served basis.

Teen stuff takes up a significant proportion of items on offer on this website, ranging from Playstation games to arcade tokens.

University student Lim MayAnn, 27, managed to satisfy her craving for her favourite movies through the website.

‘I was thinking of watching old movies like A Time To Kill, but I didn’t want to have to spend money and go around hunting for them,’ she says.

‘So when someone said he was giving his copy away, I headed down to his place in Bishan, which is pretty near my home in Upper Thomson, to collect the movie.’

An online check revealed that there are more websites which offer teens in Singapore the chance to swop items.

They include Swapace and Bookmooch, with the former offering quirky items such as a pet spider and hair-styling clay and the latter focusing on books.

S’pore gains a new dimension, on Google Earth

By Tan Weizhen, ST

Netizens are flocking to Singapore – the virtual version, that is.

A growing number of businesses and individuals are customising parts of the map of Singapore on Google Earth, and are using it as a marketing tool, to exchange notes, or to indulge in a hobby that is catching on – 3-D modelling.

Google Earth lets users view a topographical map of practically any spot on earth. Users can zoom in even on street corners – clicking on a magnifying glass icon, for example, could give you a view of the top of your apartment block.

The original imagery is two-dimensional, but users are working to change that.

Creating 3-D models of real buildings and forming a virtual city online are among the activities generating the biggest buzz online.

Mr Nathan Choe is among those who spend hours creating virtual buildings. The 19-year-old undergraduate at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture says he is ‘passionate about building models’.

So far, he has built over 15 of them, mostly of buildings in the Central Business District.

Among the growing band of 3-D modellers flocking to Google Earth is a group of Temasek Polytechnic students who have created a 3-D model of their campus.

Ms Sim Poh Leng, 20; and Mr Ryan Chia and Mr Benjamin Liew, both 19, took six months to finish the job, and the polytechnic now intends to put it to good use.

It wants to let students access courses within the campus using Google Earth.

Mr Oh Chin Lock, a lecturer at the poly’s infocomm and IT school, said: ‘We might do this within the next six months – upload YouTube videos of lectures or maybe even a live feed via webcams. Students just need to click on their faculty and view the pop-up video.’

Other schools, like Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), have jumped on the bandwagon, while other modellers have created 3-D representations of attractions like the Singapore Flyer and the route for the F1 race in September.

Even condominium residents have put up models of their blocks – The Straits Times found at least two, Springdale and Goldenhill Park.

Companies – from small set-ups to restaurants and hotels – are also turning to Google Earth to raise their visibility. The firms have added information to their locations on the map.

Clicking on the location for the Pan Pacific Hotel, for instance, brings up a page showing a picture of the hotel, with its address and Web link, as well as reviews.

Since Alenu IT Business Solutions, a small firm in River Valley Road, added its contact details and website address to its location on the map last year, it claims it has gained potential partners and clients ‘from all over the world’.

Temasek Polytechnic’s Mr Oh thinks property developers can also capitalise on the new trend. ‘They can show the plot of land and the 3-D model of their property even before it is built. This will benefit overseas buyers too,’ he said.

It is not just businesses that are getting a boost from Google Earth, though.

Two Google Earth Singapore communities have sprung up online – Earth@sg and SinGeo – and their numbers are increasing.

The members discuss issues and create new uses for Google Earth and Maps. For example, SinGeo has created a simple animation of dengue hot spots in Singapore, which can be uploaded and viewed on Google Earth.

Earth@sg had 40,000 unique visitors the past month, up from 15,000 in the same period last year. SinGeo has on average 37,200 hits monthly, up from 6,200 last year.

Software developer Jon Petersen, 44, who started SinGeo, said there is another use that has not been tapped yet: tourism.

But to do this, he added, Singaporeans should get on the map quickly. ‘We should start putting nice photos, videos, and any other information of our city attractions on Google Earth.’

Marketing the long tail

By Andy Ho, ST

What does Amazon.com have in common with Grameen Bank? Both the e-retailer and the microfinance pioneer ride on what is now called ‘The Long Tail’.

It is commonly said that 20 per cent of the market accounts for 80 per cent of the sales of the iPhone. Or that 20 per cent of all music on sale – the smash hits – rakes in 80 per cent of industry revenue. And so on. This is the ubiquitous 80-20 rule – also called the Pareto Principle. Here’s why.

What emerges in free markets when consumer purchase patterns are graphed is not the famous bell-shaped curve – or ‘normal distribution’ in statistician-speak – but the long-tailed one.

Called the ‘Pareto distribution’, this graph has a tall, slim body standing upright that tails off quickly as a curve and flattens out horizontally for a long way, coming very close to but never quite touching the floor. The latter is the long tail. In it resides the non-hits while the body carries the smash hits.

Can the long tail be monetised? Many of the non-hits can potentially be sold because many people may like them. However, business finds it more economic to market just the hits. It is very cumbersome for consumers who want alternatives – the back catalogue, obscure labels, niche genres – to actually get their hands on them.

In 2003, MIT researchers demonstrated that Amazon.com was making a lot of money selling obscure books that brick-and-mortar stores usually don’t stock. By aggregating sales from here, there and everywhere, millions of books were sold. The benefit to consumers from this increase in choice was 10 times larger than that derived from the lower prices found online.

To Amazon, it does not matter whether it sells a blockbuster or a nearly out-of-print title because the margins for both are about the same. For it, profits are spread as evenly as sales because its books are stored in a central location. Storage costs, spread out over such huge numbers of books, are kept low.

In contrast, brick-and-mortar bookstores stock only books that the owners reckon will fly off the shelves. For them, shelf space costs money because of rental, utilities and personnel. Moreover, the store’s geographical reach is limited to, say, tens of miles around it. With Fed-Ex or UPS at its beck and call, Amazon’s pool of customers is effectively worldwide.

Likewise, e-Bay makes a killing selling basically one-offs – the long tail of hard goods. Meanwhile, Google rakes it in through many small advertisers, charging a small fee per click from the billions of searches consumers make all over the world every day – the long tail of advertising.

Journalist Chris Anderson has done a lot to popularise this idea of the long tail.

It’s the old saw: Many a little makes a mickle. What helps an Amazon sell so much from way down the list or deep in the catalogue is the ‘filter’.

This may be software that asks you to rate the offerings – thumbs up or down, or one to five stars. In this way, the choices Amazon offers you in the future will be more akin to your preferences.

The ‘filter’ could also be something like Amazon’s ‘people like you’ approach, which utilises user recommendations to target likely customers with similar inclinations.

But how can consumers keep an eye on the ball when there are so many balls up in the air? RSS – Really Simple Syndication – has made that task much easier.

RSS is an automated ‘feed’ that summarises the content of sites – usually news, blogs or podcasts – that you subscribe to. You do that by clicking that distinctive orange-coloured RSS icon in your browser. You can then check for new content when alerted.

With millions of consumers able to keep track of new, idiosyncratic offerings online, the long tail can potentially combine enough non-blockbusters to create a market that may, in total, exceed the hits.

All this is not to repudiate the 80-20 rule per se. It is simply that the rule applies only to hits. The 80-20 rule upholds the tyranny of the hit. It applies only to the body of the curve.

The trick then would be to recognise where long-tail niche opportunities lie and grow those markets. Their exploitation will be enabled by Internet technologies, but not always. The Bangladeshi microfinancing institution called Grameen Bank, which won its founder Muhammad Yunus the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, also taps the long tail.

Since its inception in 1983, Grameen has been offering tiny loans to the very poor so they can start very humble businesses and work towards financial independence. Built up with tiny amounts of seed money, these businesses have done well despite the relatively high interest rates they have to pay.

As of last October, Grameen had offered a total of US$6.55 billion (S$9 billion) in loans and recovered US$5.87 billion from a total of 7.34 million borrowers. Peer pressure from fellow borrowers serves to ensure credit discipline. Meanwhile, Grameen stays afloat with donor support and also by selling bonds guaranteed by the Bangladesh government.

There is now also an online microfinance site at Kiva.org. People from anywhere in the world can offer tiny loans to the very poor somewhere else. Using a credit card, you can start by lending as little as US$25 to any borrower whose profile is featured on the site.

When your loan is repaid, you can take back your money or lend it out again to another poor aspiring businessman. Imagine the loans a few million people can give out in aggregate.

Business can likewise try to reach potential customers using social networks such as YouTube or MySpace. But the key remains the inventory and distribution costs. When these are high, only massively popular products can be sold profitably. If these can be kept low, you can use the Internet, especially social networks, to work the long tail and wag the dog. Through e-word of mouth, niche interests and idiosyncratic tastes can be served profitably.

Many a mickle will finally make a muckle.