What does the price index number mean?

The price index is one number for your whole range. 100 means your prices are level with the market. Below 100 you are cheaper than the market, above 100 you are dearer.

You find it in two places: in your weekly or monthly report and on the Trends page. They are worked out slightly differently, so the two numbers can differ.

In your report

Each report shows a Price index card, marked 100 = market, and a chart of the last 12 weeks or months.

How priceq works it out for the period:

1. For every shop and every product, priceq takes the middle value (the median) of all prices it measured. A two-day promotion hardly moves a median, a lasting price change does.
2. The market price of a product is the average of those values across the shops.
3. For each product, your selling price is divided by that market price. When priceq has no selling price for a product, it uses the list price.
4. The index is the average of those ratios, times 100.

Only competitors make up the market: your own shop never counts. Archived products are left out. A shop only counts when priceq measured at least 5 of your products there in the period. When no shop qualifies, the card shows a dash.

In the chart, the solid line counts every product equally. When priceq has sales figures for you, a dashed line weighs each product by its revenue, so your best sellers count more. Without sales figures there is only the solid line. After the first report you see a single value; the line appears once a second period is measured.

On the Trends page

Your price index over time uses the prices measured at your own shop instead of your catalogue price. For each day, or each week for periods longer than a month, it divides your price by the average of the other shops' latest prices for that product. Only competitors with stock count, and only products where both sides have a price. Days on which too few products were measured are left blank.

At the top of the page, the card index · 100 = market shows the latest value and how many products it was averaged over.

Why the two can differ

A report uses your selling price and medians over a whole week or month. Trends uses the price your shop page showed that day. If your shop page and your catalogue disagree, the two numbers disagree too.

Related: Weekly and monthly reports, The Trends page, Why don't my report numbers match?.