PDI Data Release Update — Quarterly Refresh Cadence

Beginning with the 2025 Q3 release, PDI is moving to a quarterly update cadence for their Transaction Data Feed. Each quarterly release will include:

• A full refresh of all historical data
• The most recent quarter of transactions
• Any methodological changes, which will be applied across all available history
  • Example: If PDI updates how DISCOUNT_AMOUNT is calculated, for example, by now including basket-level discounts, a transaction that previously showed a $0 discount might now show a $5 discount. When PDI applies this new logic to the entire dataset, all historical transactions are recalculated, so past years’ discount values may change even though the underlying transactions did not. This ensures the historical data reflects the updated, more accurate methodology.

This shift ensures more consistent, fully QA’d data while reducing the noise and incongruities that can appear in more frequent incremental updates.

Quarterly full-history refreshes lead to more reliable time-series analyses:

• More complete: Newly discovered transactions and previously missing stores are added.
• Cleaner: Duplicate records and misattributed stores are removed.
• More consistent: Standardized product and category mappings (now based on PDI’s Universal Product List and NACS taxonomy).

Because each update includes historical corrections, researchers may see small adjustments to trending metrics after each quarterly refresh. This is expected and reflects improved methodology.

Please note: A new version DOI will be minted for each release, reflecting material improvements. The canonical DOI for will remain unchanged.

Highlights from the 2025 Q3 Refresh