ValueClick Inc. has conducted it’s 6th annual price comparison study amongst the nations of the world. If you’re looking for bargains, you might want to head to Beijing, China and avoid Oslo, Norway at all costs. US prices were found to be relatively low internationally, most likely because of the low value of the US dollar at the time the study was performed (October 1-12, 2007).

The study was not extensive - it compared the prices of retail stores (i.e. not online) for only 26 consumer products, including gasoline, milk, Big Macs, adult movie tickets and consumer electronic items like the Nintendo Wii, MS Xbox 360 and the iPod Classic. Also, only 29 cities were including the top 7 most populous regions in the United States (Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Seattle).

For complete information about the study, please see the BusinessWire writeup.

Price comparison technologies have been on the rise since the late 1990s.  Sites using price comparison technologies provide a service to the end user that gives them the ability to compare prices from multiple retailers on the same product, for purchase online (or offline, in some cases).  Some price comparison sites are global in nature, in that they compare prices on all types of consumer products in all jurisdictions around the world.  Other price comparison sites concentrate on certain geographic areas, while others concentrate on certain types of products only.

This blog will discuss the technologies being used in price comparison sites, as well as introducing sites that might not be so well known or that are serving areas that are quite niche and thus hard to find.  Please feel free to send us suggestions on sites to profile, as well as your reviews of sites that you have used.  We intend to make updates to this blog weekly.