Then I looked at an aspect pretty unique to Austria: discounts. You see, in a normal country, with a competitive grocery market, you usually have about 10%-20% of products that get discounted on average. In Austria, that rate is 40%. It's a fantastic way to obfuscate the actual price of a product. As a customer, you'll never know what you'll pay on that day until you see the current discounts directly in the store. The chains are very generous and will send you discount leaflets via mail.