锤子计划：减少加拿大食品杂货行业的勾结

锤子计划旨在通过数据收集和分析来增加加拿大主要杂货店之间的竞争。目标是编译一个可公开访问的数据库，其中包含来自领先杂货店网站的历史价格。该数据库应支持学术研究以及针对任何共谋行为证据的潜在法律行动。要取得成功，需要具有经济学、数据处理和分析专业知识的志愿者的合作。感兴趣的人可以通过电子邮件 ([jacob@website]) 联系创建者 Jacob，以获得机会，例如进行经济分析、测试数据是否有错误或改进，或者分享与其他地区或 Mario Zechner 作品中的杂货定价相关的知识。初步数据集已经可用，其中包含 2024 年 6 月 10 日至 2024 年 9 月 8 日期间七家加拿大杂货店的价格。该数据集采用 SQLite 文件格式，可以使用免费的 DB 浏览器软件打开。我们鼓励用户探索原始数据，将其转换为 CSV 文件，并调查特定时期（例如 11 月 1 日至 2 月 5 日）的三明治成本或定价模式等方面。进一步研究的潜在问题包括分析售前和售后商品价格的变化，确定特定商品是否始终出现在“销售”中，检查各个杂货商价格趋势之间的关系，检测一个零售商领先而其他零售商跟随的情况，评估价格是否波动随机或精确地相互模仿，并识别各个竞争对手之间的总体价格趋势。分享研究结果可以帮助制定旨在提高加拿大杂货市场公平性的策略。

Project Hammer seeks to increase competition among major Canadian grocery stores through data collection and analysis. The goal is to compile a publicly accessible database containing historical prices from leading grocery store websites. The database should support academic research as well as potential legal actions against any evidence of colluding behavior. Collaboration from volunteers with expertise in economics, data processing, and analysis is needed to achieve success. Those interested can contact the creator Jacob via email ([jacob@website]) for opportunities such as performing economic analyses, testing the data for errors or improvements, or sharing knowledge related to grocery pricing in other regions or from Mario Zechner's works. A preliminary dataset is already available, containing prices from seven Canadian grocery stores between June 10th, 2024 and September 8th, 2024. The dataset comes in SQLite file format, which can be opened using the free DB Browser software. Users are encouraged to explore the raw data, convert it to CSV files, and investigate aspects such as sandwich costs or pricing patterns during specific periods (e.g., Nov. 1 - Feb. 5). Potential questions for further study include analyzing changes in item prices before and after sales, determining whether specific items consistently appear on 'sales,' examining relationships between individual grocers' price trends, detecting instances where one retailer leads while others follow, assessing whether prices fluctuate randomly or mimic each other precisely, and identifying overall price tendencies among various competitors. Sharing findings could help inform strategies aimed at improving fairness in the Canadian grocery market.

Last updated on:

September 11, 2024

Project Goal

Project Hammer aims to drive more competition and reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector.

To get this done, we will:
1. Compile a database of historical grocery prices from top grocers’ websites.
2. Make the database available in a format that is suitable for academic analysis and for legal action.
3. Inform changemakers of the existence of this dataset (and make it reasonably easy for them to use).

I Need Your Help

I can’t do this alone. This project can only succeed with a community of people around it – people like you, who bring their own skills and perspectives to the challenge.

Reach out to me (email “jacob” at this website) if:

You can do economic analysis of pricing data, and especially the interaction/correlation of multiple streams of prices across time
You are skilled with data processing and normalization
You’d play with the data for 1 day and tell me of all the bugs/issues/opportunities you found
You are doing similar pricing work in other countries / you’ve been inspired by Mario Zechner’s work
You are a data-oriented politician, aide, activist, journalist or lawyer who’s interested in improving Canada’s hyper-concentrated grocery sector

Source: Competition Bureau Retail Grocery Market Study Report, June 27, 2023

Canadian Grocery Price Data

SQLite file with data from June 10, 2024 to September 8, 2024:

Contains prices from 7 Canadian grocery websites. I recommend that you open it with the free DB Browser application and play with the “raw” table / export to .csv.

Price Visualizations from the Dataset

Full interactive page for the below visualization

Full interactive page for the below

Research Questions

Here are some ideas to play with when looking at the data:

Visualize the price of making a standard sandwich at each of the grocers (200g white bread + 20g ham + 20g lettuce...) Which grocer is cheapest?
Will there be a Nov. 1 to Feb. 5 price freeze on certain products?:
Metro stated that “It is an industry practice to have a price freeze from Nov. 1 to Feb. 5 for all private label and national brand grocery products, and this will be the case in all Metro outlets.”
When a product goes on "sale", how long has it been since the previous sale? (if something is constantly on sale, then that's just its regular price)
When something's on "sale", did the price get jacked up artificially just ahead of the sale, only to lower it back down to normal?
How are different grocers responding to each other's price moves, on a certain product/category?
- Is someone always leading price movements, and the others follow?
- Is one retailer always reacting, and never initiates price moves?
- Do prices move exactly in tandem?
- Do prices move completely in random, with no interaction?
- Do prices always rise, and never fall?
Which grocer is generally the cheapest across all comparable product families?
Do prices on certain "bundles of products" always move in tandem, at a single grocer? (think eggs, milk and bread always rising/dropping by similar amounts together)