Boots Data Scraping Services

Multibuy changes cost per unit, not price

Three-for-two, buy-one-get-one and mix-and-match offers are the dominant promotional mechanic in UK health and beauty. None of them changes the shelf price.

• A dataset tracking price only records no change at all through a three-for-two, which is a substantial promotion.
• Resolving to cost per unit makes the promotion visible, but requires assuming the shopper buys the qualifying quantity — which not all do.
• Mix-and-match offers span multiple products, so the effective unit cost depends on which combination is bought.

We capture the mechanic itself in multibuy_type and multibuy_qualifying_qty, and compute effective_unit_cost at the qualifying quantity with that assumption recorded as a field. Both the shelf price and the effective unit cost are published, so a comparison can be made on either basis and stated as such.

Points are value the price field never sees

Advantage Card points, and particularly points events offering elevated earn rates, are a major promotional lever in this category and they change the value a shopper receives without touching the price.

We capture the points offer as displayed, including any elevated rate and its window, as a non-price value field. Where a client wants a monetary equivalent we can supply one with the conversion assumption stated, rather than silently discounting the price by an assumed point value.

The distinction matters because point value is a modelling assumption, not an observation, and burying it inside a price field makes it invisible to whoever reads the number later.

Pharmacy-restricted lines need different handling

Part of the Boots catalogue is pharmacy-restricted: products sold only under pharmacist supervision, with purchase limits and sometimes questions before sale.

These are flagged with is_pharmacy_restricted and any stated purchase limit is captured. We collect only publicly visible listing information, and we do not collect or infer anything about individual purchases, prescriptions or health data of any kind.

For clients working in this category, the flag matters because restricted lines behave differently on availability and promotion and should usually be analysed separately rather than blended into a general health benchmark.

Own labels are a large part of the shelf

Boots operates substantial own-brand ranges across health, beauty and baby, competing directly with the third-party brands it retails, on the same category pages.

is_own_brand is assigned by a published rule with the brand list shipped. Own labels typically participate in multibuy mechanics differently from third-party brands, so a promotional-intensity measure that blends the two describes neither accurately.