The Kallax Index - Scraping Ikea websites
The Kallax Index
If you're at least a bit interested in economics, you've surely heard about the Big Mac Index by The Economist.
Invented in 1986, it's a simplified way to understand if currencies have a "fair" exchange rate, using the theory of the purchasing-power-parity: in the long term, a Big Mac should cost everywhere the same.
As an example, if a Big Mac costs 1 dollar in the US and 4 Yuan in China, the expected currency exchange is 1:4, but if on the markets is 1:6 it means that the Yuan is undervalued.
But what it's true for a Big Mac, isn't true for most of the retail world. Prices for the same item vary considerably from country to country, depending on the production site location, the logistics costs to the retail point and then to the final customer, taxation and import\export duties, and currency exchanges.