The Use of Scanner Data for Price Statistics in the Netherlands

Huib van de Stadt

Head of Unit Prices and Business Cycle

Statistics Netherlands

15 October 2009

Scannerdata

– Average transaction price (sales / number)– per EAN-code – per supermarket – per week

– Price pairs on lowest possible level– Aggregation for CPI and HICP

Advantages

– No sampling needed– Transaction price instead of advertised price– No interviewing needed. Low costs– Error free digital data transmission– Turn-over information for weighting

Implementation

– In 2002 for one supermarket chain

– In november 2009 five additional chains– Market share in Coicop 1 = 40%– 5% of HICP– Data for ca. 50.000 articles = EAN-codes

– Manual price collection will be reduced by 5000 monthly prices (9%)

Future

– For another 5 chains scannerdata available – Other branches– Many contacts with other chains– Implementation will start in 2010– Finetuning data filters

Uses beyond HICP

– More detailed product classification. EAN?– Average prices– European Comparison Program– Regional prices (not in current data)

No production system available!

Questions?