FAQs - Consumer Edge

If I’m looking at the Cross-Shop of merchant A and merchant B, how do I figure out how many total shoppers there were at merchant A to calculate the denominator?

You’re only showing the number of cross-shoppers. The file contains the cross-shop and A with A and B with B, which will give you the total number of shoppers at the respective merchants.

Why can’t I see all combinations of cross-shop in the data?

Because the size of the data for all cross-shop combinations would be limiting, we only provide cross-shop between merchants in the same subindustry. The exceptions are the key merchants Walmart, Target. Amazon, Costco, Shein, Temu, and Instacart.

What kinds of data does Consumer Edge provide?

Consumer Edge offers transaction data that captures consumer spending behavior across more than 13,000 brands. The dataset includes both macro-level trends and granular, merchant-level insights. Coverage dates back to January 1, 2014, with consistent year-over-year data starting in 2019, allowing researchers to track trends from pre-COVID periods through the pandemic and into the post-COVID recovery.

How is the data useful to academics?

Because of the company’s investment background, the data is especially useful for finance and business school professors. Academic researchers can:

Analyze company activity at the stock ticker level
Study the impact of M&A and other corporate actions on performance
Map trends to reported KPIs and financial outcomes

The dataset is structured to support studies of firm-level behavior as well as broader consumer trends.

How is the data categorized?

Consumer Edge uses a flexible tagging system that allows users to explore trends at multiple levels:

Over 130 sub-industries rolled up into 30 broader industries
Full transaction history for each brand, including retroactive tagging
Ability to drill down to specific merchants or locations (e.g., same-store sales)

Researchers can start from broad consumer categories and work down to individual companies or store-level performance.

Where does the data come from?

Consumer Edge sources its data directly from banks and payment processors through formal partnerships. All transaction data is anonymized before it reaches Consumer Edge, and the company applies additional internal anonymization steps to ensure compliance. Individual consumer identifiers are never seen or stored.

What privacy measures are in place?

Privacy is a core focus. Consumer Edge implements:

A best-in-class privacy framework
End-to-end anonymization from data providers through final datasets
Strict filtering of non-compliant or high-risk records

All analysis is conducted at an aggregated, trend-level view, with no risk of individual identification.

How is the data cleaned or filtered?

Outlier filtering is applied to remove transactions that would distort trend analysis—such as unusually large or atypical purchases. This helps preserve the signal in the data and supports more accurate detection of inflection points and behavioral shifts.

What makes Consumer Edge's tagging unique?

Consumer Edge offers multi-level tagging that captures all entities in a transaction. For example, if a customer orders Wendy’s through DoorDash using PayPal, the system tags all three:

The merchant (Wendy’s)
The distributor (DoorDash)
The payment platform (PayPal)

This tagging allows researchers to study channel interactions and cross-brand dynamics in a way that goes beyond most consumer panels.

What about panel stability?

The panel is engineered to be stable over time. Researchers don’t need to apply their own adjustments to account for shifting panel composition. Any observed change in consumer behavior reflects real-world dynamics, not changes in the underlying sample.

Who uses Consumer Edge data?

The data is used by:

Hedge funds and institutional investors
Private equity and venture capital firms
Corporates tracking market trends and competitors
Academic researchers focused on consumer economics, corporate strategy, or finance