israeli-grocery-price-intelligence

Download the PricesFull XML feeds from each chain's price transparency portal, parse them into normalized JSON, and match products by barcode. Apply active promotions from the PricesPromotions feed to compute the effective price per chain.

Use the included parse_price_xml.py script with a --chain flag to handle chain-specific field mappings. It reads plain or gzipped XML, tries UTF-8 then Windows-1255 encoding, and outputs normalized JSON with item code, name, price, and update date.

Chains with 3 or more stores must publish prices, including Shufersal, Rami Levy, Yochananof, Victory, Carrefour Israel (formerly Mega/Yeinot Bitan), Osher Ad, and Tiv Taam. Each publishes PricesFull, PricesPromotions, and Stores files, typically updated overnight.

Matching fails when chains use different product names or barcode formats for the same item. Match by barcode first, then fall back to fuzzy name matching combined with manufacturer; imported products may retain non-729 barcodes.

Yes, prices in Israeli feeds include 18% VAT by default, unlike US prices which are pre-tax. Comparisons must avoid double-counting or ignoring VAT when benchmarking against prices from other countries.

Comparing every item across all chains and store locations is computationally expensive. Limit the comparison to chains with stores within a configurable radius (default 5 km) and reuse cached price data instead of refetching feeds.