Britain to Revamp Grocery Price Data Collection

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain will gather price data from over 1 billion units of grocery sales each month from supermarket scanners when it introduces a new system for measuring inflation in the sector next year, the country’s statistics agency said on Tuesday.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS), which is modernising its data collection methods, announced that this move, set for March 2025, constitutes the largest update to its inflation data gathering to date, covering 50% of the grocery market.

Currently, ONS price collectors visit shops to collect 25,000 prices per month. With the new system, approximately 300 million price points will be covered, derived from sales of more than a billion units of products each month, according to the agency.

This new approach will enhance the range of products monitored by the ONS, facilitating price collection throughout the entire month rather than on a single day. It will also provide insights into quantities sold, thereby capturing changes in consumer behavior in response to price fluctuations.

In the previous year, the ONS started utilizing a new source of digital data encompassing all consumer train fares, and it has increased the number of price points for second-hand cars from 105 to 300,000 per month this year.

The ONS will continue leveraging price collectors to track price changes in smaller grocery stores and other outlets.