New Retail Price Data Sources for ONS
August 6 2024
In the UK, the ONS (Office for National Statistics) is adding digital data to its price monitoring systems, promising what it calls 'a significant improvement in the quality of consumer price statistics' and the tracking of inflation rates. Changes include the adoption of supermarket scanner data from March next year.
The organisation's headline inflation metrics are compiled by constructing a large virtual 'shopping basket' with around 750 frequently purchased goods and services, updated annually to reflect changing spending patterns.
In a blog post, Deputy Director Prices Transformation Division Mike Hardie said traditional means of tracking price changes had included 'going into stores with handheld devices' or checking web sites, but digital sources have the potential to vastly increase the volume of data on which inflation estimates are based. Key examples include:
- data on train fares from the Rail Delivery Group, increasing the ONS' number of price points from a single growth rate to around 40 million prices per month, covering all consumer rail fares transactions in Great Britain
- data from Auto Trader data, measuring change in the price of second-hand cars, upping the number of available price points from 105 to 300,000 per month
- from March 2025, 50% of the grocery market will be monitored via data direct from scanners at supermarket checkouts - this is currently addressed by sending 'price collectors' into shops to collect 25,000 prices per month. The new system will provide around 300 million price points derived from sales of over a billion units of products per month.
Hardie says the new sources bring benefits in terms of coverage - replacing figures based on a selection of bread varieties, for example, with price data from all bread products. They also allow for continuous data spanning an entire month, rather than collected on a specific day, permitting capture of how prices evolve during a month - for example the current method may miss a two-week special offer.
Additionally, the ONS will now also know the quantities of products being sold, including switches in consumer behaviour on a specific product line when one brand increases in price, for example.
Web site:
www.ons.gov.uk .
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
