Sam's Club is getting into the macroeconomic data business with a small business confidence index:
Sam's Club, the warehouse store division of the world's largest retailer, surveyed 1,200 small business owners about the economy, their hiring plans and other issues. The retailer said it will release its new Small Business Confidence Index monthly.Why would Wal-Mart create its own survey about small businesses? Because their slogan is that they are "in business for small business", and this is national small business week. But why not trust the survey conducted by say NFIB, which has a small business optimism index?Wal-Mart's (Research) Sam's Club targets small business owners and has gathered data from them for some time, but until now it has never publicly released such information.
The retailer said small business owners have more confidence in the economy than consumers do, but just 45 percent of those surveyed said they were confident or very confident about the chances for a strong economy in the next six months. That was a drop of almost 7 percentage points from a year earlier, Sam's Club said.
Here's the press release with summary tables. Some methodology detail:
Data for the Small Business Confidence Index is based upon analysis of 1,200 business purchasers, surveyed monthly by BIGresearch on critical issues affecting small businesses (Margin of error: plus or minus one percent).There is no such thing as a simple "margin of error" for surveys that ask about people's beliefs and put them into very narrow buckets... but that is the practice nowadays.
I've suggested before that Wal-Mart publish a price index for its stores, perhaps on a regional basis; they must have one already for internal consumption. Economists could REALLY use this as a better benchmark for the actual prices that people have to pay...
Posted by Kevin on April, 25 2005 at 02:10 PM
