Outlet villages Our research
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This article, Outlet villages, was last updated on 30 November 2007 and is now out of date and held in our online archive for reference. Explore our latest Money articles.
We compared prices from outlets to online and high-street shops
How we test
In August 2007 we visited the Swindon Designer Outlet and Bicester Village, near Oxford, and compared prices of selected items with the prices of identical or near identical items on sale in high-street shops in central London.
We identified the cheapest online prices using comparison websites pricerunner and google products.
To get your point of views we also conducted a survey on outlet shopping villages in July and August 2007 where 1,878 Which? online panel members took part.
To find out whether outlet villages really can provide big savings, we compared the cost of 18 items, ranging from Calvin Klein boxer shorts to a Le Creuset casserole dish.
The total cost of the 18 items were:
- High street £1,148.98
- Online (inc p&p) £956.71
- Outlet village £761.98
We found an average discount in outlet stores of around 30% compared with the lowest prices in the respective brands’ own stores, for example, Levi’s Store and Niketown, and in department stores, including John Lewis.
