Patterns of Retail Price Variation

Abstract

We examine retail price variation across a range of goods and regions of the United States. We find that the typical grocery product has a regular price and stays at that price at least 50% of the time, and that most deviations from that regular price are downward. Temporary discounts or sales, while infrequent, account for 20% to 50% of the annual variation in retail prices for most product categories. Although existing models of retail sales yield predictions consistent with some aspects of the retail pricing distributions, all of these models fail to explain other important aspects of retail pricing identified here.