Affiliations: [a] Department of Statistical Methods, University of Łódź, Łódź, Poland | E-mail: jacek.bialek@uni.lodz.pl | [b] Department of Trade and Services, Statistics Poland, Poland | E-mail: J.Bialek@stat.gov.pl
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Department of Statistical Methods, University of Łódź, Łódź, Poland. E-mail: jacek.bialek@uni.lodz.pl.
Abstract: Scanner data can be obtained from a wide variety of retailers (supermarkets, home electronics, Internet shops, etc.) and provide information at the level of the barcode, i.e. the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN, formerly known as the EAN code). After cleaning data and unifying product names, products should be carefully classified (e.g. into the COICOP 5 level or below), matched, filtered, and aggregated. These procedures often require creating new IT or writing custom scripts (R, Python, Mathematica, SAS, others). One of new challenges connected with scanner data is the appropriate choice of the index formula. The article discusses a new R package, i.e. PriceIndices, which is used to process scanner data and to calculate bilateral and multilateral price indices, along with their window extensions. The assumptions for the construction of the package were such that it would serve both practitioners and scientists through a multitude of methods and their parametrization. The main purpose of the article is to present the utility of the package in the field of analyzing the dynamics of scanner prices.
