NOTICE OF INTENT TO SOLE SOURCE; AGGREGATED RETAIL POINT-OF-SALE/SCANNER TRANSACTION DATA

The United States Census Bureau produces several data products for the retail economy. The Economic Census is conducted every five years and captures the most comprehensive store and product-level information of any of our survey instruments. The Census collects data for each company at the store or location level. The results of the Economic Census are also the core of the sampling frame that many of our Economic Surveys are built upon. Our Annual Retail Trade Survey is conducted every year and captures data at the company level and collects national sales, inventories, e-commerce, and expense data for sampled retailers. Our Advanced Monthly Retail Trade Survey and our Monthly Retail Trade Survey are subsamples of the Annual Survey and produce timely retail estimates. The information collected in these surveys has a much more limited scope with focus on the national sales figure for both brick and mortar and e-commerce retailers. The retail economy is a dynamic one that is garnering great attention as it evolves to meet consumer’s changing needs and to adapt to emerging technologies. As a result, there is an increased interest in the Census Bureau’s retail data products. At the same time, however, response rates for Census surveys are declining due to respondent burden and increased protection of non-public company records. The 2018-2022 Department of Commerce Strategic Plan makes a commitment to reducing the burden of responding to surveys and leveraging non-traditional data sources. The objective of this procurement is to continue to produce high quality official statistics while making use of a third-party data source that is collecting data that is comparable to what retailers would be providing on Census Bureau data collection instruments. In order to make use of third-party data that is comparable to data that would be collected via traditional data collection instruments for retail surveys and the Economic Census, the Census Bureau needs a consistent store-level and detailed product category-level data source that covers a wide variety of retailers across geographies, size, and kind of retail business. Additionally, the Census Bureau needs data that is curated by retail groupings that are identified by the Census Bureau and requires that third-party data source provides no information that would allow for the identification of individual purchasers or transactions. An Example of curated product data includes: Data set of product level detail by aggregated zip code data for all retailers (Store Level Database); Categories: Chicken Eggs, Cows Milk, RTE Cereal, Soft Drinks; Report Type: Item/UPC level report, by Value, Units, and Avg Unit Price as specified by the Census Bureau in groupings. Data should be provided from 2018-current, broken out by month. This procurement would allow for a continuous data flow to support the survey life cycles for the Census Bureau’s indicator programs, annual survey programs, and Economic Census program. This is a notice of intent to sole source a procurement with NielsenIQ to obtain real-time point-of-sale grocery and pharmacy sector data about individual retailers. The objective of this procurement is to improve the quality of Census Bureau retail data products while also reducing the burden to respondents.