Canadian Soft Goods Index

Canadian Soft Goods Index

Apparel & Household Textile Purchase Information

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The Canadian Soft Goods Index is Canada’s largest continuous consumer purchase tracking study for apparel and household textiles. The program’s information is based on interviews conducted quarterly by mail with a nationally representative sample of 10,000 Canadian households. The program collects information on the Canadian consumer’s purchases of 175 different apparel items (e.g., bras) and 62 different household textile (e.g., duvets) end uses. For each end use the following purchase information is collected: brand, outlet, price paid, fiber content along with a complete demographic profile of the product’s purchasers.

Companies can access the data either though a yearly subscription by purchasing individual annual syndicated product reports or by purchasing a one-time customized analysis.

Canadian Soft Goods Index Methodology

A. Fieldwork

Each quarter, 10,000 households are selected from Delvinia Canada’s panel of cooperating households, which is recruited every two years. The sample is selected in two steps:

First, nationally representative samples of both single males and females between the ages of 21 to 35 are selected. These single individuals are either living by themselves or with other adults. The selection criteria eliminates any singles with children. Both single samples are balanced on household income within province. Because of the historic low response rate of both of these samples, they are over sampled in terms of their actual percentage within the Canadian population.

Second, starting with the households selected in step one, Delvinia selects a sample of households (around 8,500) that would make the entire sample (i.e., 10,000) representative of the Canadian household population. This sample is balanced initially on household size within province and the three major metropolitan areas. Once this sample has been balanced, it is readjusted to ensure household incomes are in the correct proportion within province and the three major metropolitan areas.

The quotas utilized to balance the three individual household samples have been slightly modified, beginning in the third quarter 1999, to reflect the average rates of return for each key demographic segment for the first two surveys of 1999. Note that no household is ever surveyed two quarters in a row.

B. Data Processing

Once the questionnaires are returned, the information contained in them is coded and entered into Delvinia's computer. Prior to statistically adjusting the data, four checks or edits are made to the data including:

A minimum and maximum allowable price edit (e.g., Any men’s sweat sock purchase over $20 is edited to a no answer to price)

A fiber edit (e.g., 100% wool pantyhose are edited to a no answer to fiber)

A private label total store edit (e.g., All purchases at Suzy Shier are edited to Suzy Shier P.L.)

A private label partial store edit (e.g., Cherokee brand at Sears is edited to a no answer to brand.)

After the Soft Goods database has been edited, the data is adjusted to 10,000 households utilizing a household size within province scheme. Once the appropriate adjustment has been made to each record, the weighted file is then projected to the total Canadian individual population using an age within household income scheme. In effect, the data is weighted twice: first, to correct for any household size within province/metropolitan area discrepancies and then a second time to correct for any age within household income imbalances.

After each record has been finally weighted, all of the apparel purchase data for the quarter is initially tabulated. The initial tabulation consists of a single “A” table. The “A” Table is a cross tabulation, which consists of two banner points: “Large Size Retailer” purchases and “All Other Retailer” purchases. The stub of the table consists of each of the sixteen apparel merchandise categories tracked by the Government’s Large Retailer Survey. The quarterly data from the Large Retailer Survey is then compared against the comparable Large Retailer data from the survey. Weights are assigned separately to each of the Soft Goods Large Retailer merchandise categories. The exact same weights are also applied to the comparable categories making up the “All Other Retailer Category.”

After the database is weighted, one additional adjustment is applied to the data. This adjustment is computed by comparing the absolute sales increase of the Large Size Retailers from period to period with the comparable growth for the Large Size Retailer portion of the survey. The adjustment that is created (e.g., 1.31 for Q2 99) is applied to all the Soft Goods apparel data. In summary, the first weight applied to the data ensures the demographic representation of the data. The second weight ensures that the merchandise categories are in the correct balance. The third adjustment ensures that the absolute growth in retail sales of the total market is reflected in the growth rate for the Soft Goods Index apparel data. Clearly the Canadian Soft Goods Index program is a second generation service!