Multiple studies demonstrate that web-scraped data can be effectively utilized to construct and forecast consumer price indices, yielding results comparable to traditional scanner and survey data.
The retrieved literature consistently supports the assertion that web-scraped data can be used to construct consumer price indices. Multiple studies (such as papers 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10) show that online price data, when paired with appropriate index formulas (like GEKS or hedonic adjustments) and weighting techniques (such as those in paper 4), produce price indices that align closely with traditional official statistics or scanner benchmarks. None of the papers refute this capacity; rather, they explore methodological challenges like high churn rates or weighting estimation and successfully offer solutions.