Variations in the Retail Price of Chemists' Goods: Testing Spatial and Structural Hypotheses and the ‘Sample of One’

Abstract

Spatial variations in the price of chemists' goods in Dublin are examined for a number of different baskets of products and for two time periods, so as to tackle the problem of the ‘sample of one’. A number of hypotheses including measures of store size, proximity of competition, and the type of residential area in which the shop is located are examined by means of bivariate and multiple correlation in relation to price variations, and in general the results are consistent for different baskets at a single time period: shops which are expensive for one combination of products tend to be expensive for most product combinations. However, there is little consistency of results between the two time periods, and this must create problems for price-motivated consumers: an inexpensive shop at one time period may not necessarily be inexpensive at a subsequent time period even for the same products. Even so, there is some temporal consistency in that the size of shop generally has a direct relationship with variations in prices, smaller shops being the more expensive.