In other Circumstances the required comparison May be of prices across a range of commodities. For example, a comparison might be required of clothing prices. There is a wide range of clothing.
types & prices like toddlers shoes, women's fashion shoes, boys' shorts, men's suits, etc to be considered. While comparisons can readily be made for individual or identical clothing items, this is unlikely to enable a satisfactory result for all clothing in aggregate. A Method is required for combining the prices across this diverse range of items allowing for the fact that they have many different units of quantities of measurement.
This is where price indexes play an extremely useful role. A price index is a measure of changes in a set of prices over time. Price indexes allow the comparison of two sets of prices for a common item or a group of items. In order to compare the sets of prices over time, it is necessary to designate one set the reference set and the other the comparison set.
In the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the reference price set is used as the base or first period
for constructing the index and by convention is given an index value of 100.00. You can easily compare clothes prices through online.
