Australia

So, I wanted to find a good source for this, but i can't after a short search and its late, so i'm just going to reply.

but if I did care a lot about the price, I would definitely be wanting to be able to check where I'm going to get the best deal. But I do like being able to check which products they've got so I can plan my shop

Prices and range of stock are likely controlled by IGA store owners themselves, this is not Metcash.

Metcash own the brand and do the majority of wholesaling for IGA. I think theres extras, like locally sourced produce, that independent IGA brand operators sell themselves without violating terms of the IGA brand agreement.

Due to the owner/operators of IGA stores having more price and stock control this makes it harder for things like online pricing and stocking, as each store is doing its own thing supplying their local area the way they think.

Like Mcdonalds franchisees the catalogues you get with those prices require the ongoing agreement of the IGA stores themselves.

A central data collection point is more complicated for Metcash/IGA than a single entity like ColesWortAldi. Each owner/operator needs to agree/supply a price and stock level, supply their information back likely working off multiple types of in-house operational systems across the IGA stores (also stock numbers, etc), then receive reflect and display the equivalent information as everyone else.

Its actually not dissimilar to Lemmy and its many servers.

All this said, your point about technophobia is probably very true, sometimes its straight up head in the sand, but also a key issue is these owner/operators run on tiny margins. Significant upfront costs, like built/hard tech often has, with obscure pay offs are a hard sell in these people's positions, and the stores owners themselves need to put their hands in their own pockets more often than not.

Add to this that the borrowing capacity of an organisation like Metcash/IGA is a lot lower than the 'single entity operators' and you get a less competitive and slower moving beast.

Bonus though, the money you spend at an IGA is going to take a lot longer, if ever, to become leakage to some overseas investor, so a good argument for IGA's is they increase the velocity of money swirling around in the Australian economy whereas others, Costco/Aldi particularly, cause AUD leakage quicker.