Problem with that explanation is that land costs are a more recent phenomenon here and high prices have been longstanding.

For a long time, you could get stuff shipped via Singapore using PriceSpy for way less than the usual NZ domestic price, which suggested pretty strongly that the problem was either fixed costs in domestic warehousing/retail (in which case you just shut down NZ retail and do most stuff mail order) or price discrimination by the bigger international brands. I don’t buy the latter one where parallel importing is legal, unless they’ve gotten a lot better at punishing those overseas who do substantial on-selling to NZ. Prices have come closer into line, with Noel Leeming often being the lowest cost supplier on big items. It would be neat to compare product categories facing PriceSpy competition with those without easy consumer parallel import.