Introduction – The Value Chain of Scanner and Web Scraped Data

Mehrhoff, Jens

doi:10.24187/ecostat.2019.509.1980

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Over the last decade, National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) have been dealing with a variety of new sources in the big data domain which may provide opportunities for delivering a more efficient statistical service and offering new insights into important topics, such as collecting online job advertisement data and evaluating the presence of firms on social media in the context of ICTs used by enterprises. In this framework, web-scraped price data and business transaction data obtained from retailers have proved to be useful for improving official price statistics (see, for example Mehrhoff 2019). Switching from traditional surveys to electronic data delivery reduces the burden for both statistical agencies and retailers while the availability of expenditure data in scanner data sets can be exploited to increase the accuracy of Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Scanner Data for Computing Consumer Spatial Price Indexes at Regional Level: An Empirical Application for Grocery Products in Italy

Laureti

Polidoro

2022

Journal of Official Statistics

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The importance of constructing sub-national spatial price indexes (SPIs) has been acknowledged in the literature for over two decades. However, systematic attempts to compile sub-national SPIs on a regular basis have been hampered by the labour-intensive analyses required for processing traditional price data. In the case of household consumption expenditures, the increasing availability of big data may change the current approach for estimating sub-national SPIs by considering the use of weighted index formulae. The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to review previous literature on sub-national SPIs and secondly to estimate Italian consumer SPIs. To this aim we use scanner data referring to grocery products sold in a random sample of approximately 1,800 Italian outlets belonging to the most important retail chains and including information on prices, quantities and quality characteristics of products at barcode level. Various weighted index formulas are used for calculating consumer SPIs at detailed territorial level and at the lowest aggregation level. Our results show an interesting territorial variability of consumer prices of products sold in large-scale retail outlets across the Italian regions. Overall, the Southern regions appear to have price levels below the national average both for food and non-food products with some interesting exceptions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Scanner Data for Computing Consumer Spatial Price Indexes at Regional Level: An Empirical Application for Grocery Products in Italy

Laureti

Polidoro

2022

Journal of Official Statistics

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“…This means that the collected information is often more comprehensive, with increased sample sizes and, at the same time, reduced response burden. Therefore, the development of web scraping techniques as tools to capture large amounts of price data proved to be useful for improving official price statistics (see, for example, Mehrhoff 2019;. Price statistics for groups of products, such as food, Economies 2022, 10, 95 2 of 20 or even for the whole economy are important key economic indicators as they represent a fundamental element in many decisions of the economic and private and public agents (OECD et al 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computation of High-Frequency Sub-National Spatial Consumer Price Indexes Using Web Scraping Techniques

et al. 2022

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The development of Information and Communications Technology and digital economies has contributed to changes in the consumption of goods and services in various areas of life, affecting the growing expectations of users in relation to price statistics. Therefore, it is important to provide information on differences in consumer prices across space and over time in a timely manner. Web-scraped data, which is the process of collecting large amounts of data from the web, offer the potential to improve greatly the quality and efficiency of consumer price indices. In this paper, we explore the use of web-scraped data for compiling high-frequency price indexes for groups of products by using the time-interaction-region product model. We computed monthly average prices for five entry-level items according to the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) classification and tracked their evolution over time in 11 USA cities reported in our dataset. Even if our dataset covers a small percentage of the CPI-U index, results show how web scraping data may provide timely estimates of sub-national SPI evolution and unveil seasonal trends for specific categories.

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“…Heterogeneity in online and offline pricing across retailers must be taken into account when only a few data sources are used. 62 57 See, for example, Eiglsperger (2019a) and Mehrhoff (2019). For practical recommendations on the use of scanner data, see Eurostat (2017a), and for web-scraped data, see Eurostat (2020b).…”

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confidence: 99%

Inflation Measurement and its Assessment in the Ecb's Monetary Policy Strategy Review

et al. 2021

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This paper -which takes into consideration overall experience with the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) as well as the improvements made to this measure of inflation since 2003 -finds that the HICP continues to fulfil the prerequisites for the index underlying the ECB's definition of price stability. Nonetheless, there is scope for enhancing the HICP, especially by including owneroccupied housing (OOH) using the net acquisitions approach. Filling this longstanding gap is of utmost importance to increase the coverage and cross-country comparability of the HICP. In addition to integrating OOH into the HICP, further improvements would be welcome in harmonisation, especially regarding the treatment of product replacement and quality adjustment. Such measures may also help reduce the measurement bias that still exists in the HICP. Overall, a knowledge gap concerning the exact size of the measurement bias of the HICP remains, which calls for further research. More generally, the paper also finds that auxiliary inflation measures can play an important role in the ECB's economic and monetary analyses. This applies not only to analytical series including OOH, but also to measures of underlying inflation or a cost of living index.

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Introduction – The Value Chain of Scanner and Web Scraped Data

Cited by 4 publications

References 8 publications

Using Scanner Data for Computing Consumer Spatial Price Indexes at Regional Level: An Empirical Application for Grocery Products in Italy

Using Scanner Data for Computing Consumer Spatial Price Indexes at Regional Level: An Empirical Application for Grocery Products in Italy

Computation of High-Frequency Sub-National Spatial Consumer Price Indexes Using Web Scraping Techniques

Inflation Measurement and its Assessment in the Ecb's Monetary Policy Strategy Review

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