A retailer's own website and its shops frequently show different prices for identical products. The divergence follows from cost structure and from who each channel competes with.

Cost to serve differs by channel

A shop's costs are largely fixed against the building and its staff, and each additional item sold adds very little to them.

Online, picking, packing, shipping and handling returns are incurred per order, so cost rises directly with volume and with how small each order is.

These structures diverge enough that a price which works in one channel can be unprofitable in the other, particularly for low-value bulky goods.

Each channel faces different competitors

A shop competes with whatever is within travelling distance, which in many locations is a small number of alternatives.

The website competes with every seller that ships to the same address, which is a far larger set and includes marketplace sellers with different cost bases.

Pricing to the competitive position of each channel therefore produces different answers, without any intention to treat customers differently.

Local pricing persists within store estates

Prices can also vary between branches of the same chain, reflecting local competition, rent, wage levels and the profile of the surrounding area.

This has been standard practice for far longer than online retail has existed, and it is more visible now only because prices are easier to compare.

Some retailers deliberately hold a single national price to avoid the complexity and the reaction, and treat that consistency as part of their positioning.

Matching policies bridge the gap selectively

Where a retailer honours its online price in store, it is choosing to absorb the difference rather than explain it at the till.

Such policies are usually limited, applying only to the retailer's own site and often requiring the shopper to raise it rather than being applied automatically.

The limitation is deliberate, since applying it universally would collapse the pricing of the higher-cost channel to that of the lower-cost one.

Collection blurs the boundary

Ordering online for collection in a shop uses the online price while avoiding shipping cost, which makes it the cheapest combination for the retailer as well as the shopper.

It also brings the customer into the shop, where additional purchases are common, which is why the option is frequently promoted more heavily than delivery.

The arrangement works only where the two channels share stock, which is why retailers with separate online warehouses offer it less consistently.