What is alternative data (shelf-side)?
Non-traditional data used in investment research; shelf-side data measures what is listed, at what price and availability, rather than what was bought.
Definition
Alternative data is information outside company filings and broker research that helps investors understand business performance. In consumer research it falls into two families.
Demand-side data (card, receipt and transaction panels) measures what consumers bought. Shelf-side data (web and retailer-site data) measures what was on offer: products, prices, discounts and availability.
How Data Purl measures it
Data Purl is shelf-side. It collects public retailer and brand websites weekly, then standardizes products into one category tree and maps brands to their owners, public or private, with listed owners mapped to tickers.
Why it matters
The two families answer different questions and are frequently used together: shelf-side data explains the price, promotion and assortment decisions behind the sales that demand-side data measures.
See the data for your coverage
Start free in the analytics portal, or talk to the founders about the full dataset delivered to Snowflake or S3.