Competitive pricing snapshot: identical coffee-gear products across US Shopify stores
Collected: 2026-09-27 (single snapshot, UTC timestamps per row in matched-listings.csv)
Status: a one-day snapshot, not a study. Prices change; re-check before relying on any single number.

What was collected
- Public product data that each store's Shopify storefront serves to any visitor
  (/products.json catalog listing and /products/<handle>.json for the product), fetched politely
  (one request every 2-3 seconds per store, no login, no checkout, no personal data).
- 38 US Shopify stores that sell specialty-coffee equipment (brand stores, specialist gear
  retailers, a kitchenware retailer and coffee roasters). Stores reporting a non-USD cart
  currency were excluded. 85,040 variants were downloaded; only the matched listings below are published.
- One store operates a sister outlet site with a shared catalog; the outlet was excluded so the
  same seller is not counted twice.

How products were matched
1. Primary rule: identical GTIN/UPC barcode on the variant (e.g. 840228801191).
2. Secondary rule: stores with no barcode published were included only when the listing name,
   model, colour/size variant and pack count all matched exactly on manual review.
   Ambiguous listings (no colour given, pack count missing, "coffee maker" with no model) were left out.
3. Barcode/title conflicts were reviewed by hand and excluded (for example a listing titled as a
   different dripper model that carried the V60 ceramic dripper barcode, and a circle-filter listing
   carrying the square-filter barcode).
4. A product was kept only if at least 5 stores sold the matched variant. 13 products, 109 listings,
   26 stores met this bar.

Fields
- price: the listed variant price in USD before shipping, tax or discount codes.
- compare_at: the store's "compare-at" (was) price, if any. Shopify shows a sale only when
  compare_at is higher than price.
- in_stock: the variant's "available" flag at fetch time.
- gap_vs_lowest_pct = (price - lowest price for that product) / lowest * 100.
- gap_vs_lowest_in_stock_pct uses the lowest in-stock price instead.

Not captured: shipping cost, free-shipping thresholds, discount codes, loyalty pricing,
subscription discounts, bundles, or prices shown only in cart. Delivered prices can differ.

Stores are anonymised (S01...S26) with a store type. The published data is for aggregate
illustration only and does not assess any store's pricing practices or policy compliance.