Platform specifics
What makes Lowe's data different, including from Home Depot
These are the reasons a Lowe's dataset needs its own handling rather than a shared retail schema.
The purchase is a project, so the price is one of several fields
An appliance purchase is not an item transaction. It involves delivery to a room, removal and disposal of the
old unit, sometimes disconnection and reconnection, and an appointment that has a lead time.
- Delivery may be free above a threshold or charged, and the threshold varies by category.
- Haul-away is frequently a separate charge and sometimes conditional on the new item being delivered by
the same visit.
- Fitting or installation may be offered, quoted, or unavailable in a location.
- Lead time to the earliest slot is often the deciding factor when an appliance has failed.
We capture each of these as its own field where displayed, and never fold any of them into the item price. A
total-project view can be built with the assumptions stated, rather than a single number standing in for a
decision with four moving parts.
Installed sales have a quoting boundary, and we state where it is
Several Lowe's categories are installed sales — flooring, windows, roofing, kitchens — where the
published figure is a material price and the real cost depends on measurement and a quote.
Public data cannot produce an installed price. What it can produce is the material price, the stated
installation availability, and whether a quote or in-home measurement is required.
We capture requires_quote and installation_offered and mark installed-sales
categories explicitly. Any vendor supplying installed pricing from public pages is supplying a material price
with a label on it that it does not deserve, and a client benchmarking against it will draw the wrong
conclusion.
How this differs from our Home Depot collection
These two retailers compete closely and clients almost always want them side by side, so it is worth being
explicit about how the two datasets are shaped.
Home Depot collection is built around quantity-break ladders and commodity pricing, because that is
where its pricing complexity concentrates — lumber, drywall, concrete, fasteners bought by the pallet.
Lowe's collection is built around project categories, because appliances and installed sales are where
the purchase decision has the most moving parts.
Both datasets carry the other's core fields. Price ladders are captured here too, and project fields are
captured on Home Depot where displayed. The difference is emphasis and where the QA effort goes, and the field
names are aligned so a client taking both gets one comparable dataset rather than two needing reconciliation.
Store-level availability with a lead time, not a flag
For a failed appliance, availability is a question about a date rather than a boolean. An item in stock at a
store two hours away with a three-week fitting slot is a different answer from one deliverable Saturday.
We capture per-store availability, the earliest stated delivery or collection date, and the earliest fitting
slot where displayed, all separately. Where a count is shown rather than a state we capture the count, because
for a contractor buying several units four in stock and forty in stock are different answers.