Data services

Tender description

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes measures of consumer price inflation and associated price statistics. Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise and fall; it is estimated using consumer price indices. Consumer price indices are important indicators of how the UK economy is performing. The indices are used in many ways by the government, businesses, and society in general. They can affect interest rates, tax allowances, wages, state benefits, pensions, maintenance, contracts and many other payments. The objective of this project is to obtain web-scraped data from UK retailers that are in a structured format for ONS’ estimation of their consumer price indices. ONS is only interested in provision of a service to provide data, and not in purchasing software or a licence to use an established software as a service (SAAS) solution. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes measures of consumer price inflation and associated price statistics. Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise and fall; it is estimated using consumer price indices. Consumer price indices are important indicators of how the UK economy is performing. The indices are used in many ways by the government, businesses, and society in general. They can affect interest rates, tax allowances, wages, state benefits, pensions, maintenance, contracts and many other payments. To give an accurate picture of price changes, our consumer price indices are compiled using a large and representative sample of over 700 goods and services, and their price movements are regularly measured in approximately 20 000 outlets within the UK. There are 3 distinct collection methods used in reaching the total of over 180 000 prices collected. The 3 methods are: 1) Local collection: local price collectors visit 20 000 shops in around 150 locations to collect over 100 000 prices. This ensures that variations in price across the UK are captured. The price collectors visit the same shops each month to collect the prices of identical products to ensure they are collecting like for like. The shelf-price of an item is collected, and entered into a hand-held computer; 2) Central shops: for some larger chain stores, there is a central pricing policy which is used throughout their UK branches. These prices are collected centrally, and weighted according to the retailer's market share; 3) Central collection: prices are collected centrally for goods and services where the price is the same for all UK residents or the regional variation can be collected centrally (for example via the internet, telephone or e-mail enquiries).