How askprice Tracks Prices: Methodology (2026)

askprice records one price per item per day at six US department stores: Macy's, Bloomingdale's, JCPenney, Kohl's, Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack. As of this update the catalog holds 1,700,643 unique products, and the price history used in our guides starts on November 11, 2024. This page explains where the numbers on askprice come from, how we define a markdown, a "60-day low" and a "sale that never ends", and what the data does not cover.

What we collect

Stores: macys.com, bloomingdales.com, jcpenney.com, kohls.com, nordstrom.com, nordstromrack.com. Online prices only. We do not record prices in physical stores, which can differ from the website at Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Kohl's.
Fields per observation: date, current price, the store's reference price and its label ("Orig.", "Reg.", "Comparable Value", "Compare at"), whether the store marks the item as on sale, availability, brand, category and, where the store publishes it, the model number or UPC.
Frequency: every item is re-checked once a day. The time of the last check is shown on each product page, and a price on askprice can lag the store by up to a day.
Depth: history by store starts on the dates below. The counts and dates update with the daily metrics run.

Store	Items tracked	History starts
Macy's	649,128	November 11, 2024
Kohl's	703,027	April 26, 2026
JCPenney	136,622	December 9, 2024
Bloomingdale's	211,866	November 24, 2024

Definitions used in our guides

Markdown. A price cut of at least 5% and at least $1 against the previous recorded price of the same item.
Further drop. Any later cut of at least 2% against the price set by a markdown. "Share of markdowns followed by a further drop within 10 days" counts only markdowns that we were able to observe for at least 10 more days.
Price adjustment window. The number of days a store gives you to claim the difference after its own price drops: 10 at Macy's, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, 14 at Kohl's and JCPenney, none at Nordstrom Rack. Our guides compare price behavior against these windows.
60-day low. The lowest price we recorded for the item in the 60 days before the date shown. When history for an item is shorter than 60 days, we say so and use the lowest price since tracking began.
"On sale for 30+ days." An item the store labels as on sale whose price has not changed for 30 or more consecutive days. We report the share of sale-labeled items in that state on a given date.
Reference price ever charged. The share of items that we observed at least once at a price equal to or above the store's reference price during tracking. This is the closest we can get to the question "was it ever sold at the Orig. price", and it is limited by how long we have tracked the item.
Identical item across stores. Two listings are treated as the same product only when the UPC or the brand plus model number match. Listings matched by name alone are not used in cross-store comparisons.
Black Friday price check (from November 20). An item's price on the day shown compared with its 60-day low and with its price on October 20, 2026. "Cheaper than October" means lower than the October 20 price by at least 2%.

What we do not cover

Prices in physical stores, cashier coupons, store credit card offers, Kohl's Cash, Star Money and Loyallist points. Our figures are shelf prices on the website before any of these.
Brand websites and outlets (ugg.com, coach.com, Coach Outlet, Polo factory stores) and other retailers (Amazon, Target, Walmart, Costco). When a guide compares a brand "across stores", it means across the six department stores above.
Items that look like third-party marketplace listings. The stores don't label the seller in the data we receive, so we flag Bloomingdale's "Marketplace" category and a short list of brands known to sell through store marketplaces and to reuse barcodes, and exclude those items from reference-price and cross-store statistics. Marketplace items at Macy's and Nordstrom are caught only when the brand is on that list, so some remain in the catalog.
Shipping, taxes and return fees.

How a markdown statistic is computed

Take every markdown we recorded for a store in the period stated on the page.
Keep only those with enough subsequent history (10, 14 or 30 days, depending on the statistic).
Count the share with a further drop inside the window, and the median size of that drop in dollars and percent.
Report the share, the median and the sample size. Every number on askprice guides is published with the number of items or markdowns behind it.

Limits you should know

History is uneven across stores. For Macy's, Bloomingdale's and JCPenney our records go back to November and December 2024, so Black Friday 2025 is in the data; JCPenney has a gap from June 2025 to April 2026. For Kohl's, Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack recording began in April 2026, so for those stores we cannot compare Black Friday 2026 with Black Friday 2025, and we say "lowest since tracking began" where 60 days of history are not available.
Daily resolution. A price that changed twice in one day is recorded once. Counts of "price changes during Black Friday week" are therefore lower bounds.
Store errors. Occasionally a store publishes a wrong price or a wrong reference price. Obvious outliers (a reference price more than ten times the current price, or a price of $0) are excluded.
No incentives. askprice has no affiliate agreements with the six stores and earns nothing from your purchases. Product links go to the store's own page without tracking parameters.

Corrections

If you find a wrong price, a wrong match between two stores or a policy detail that has changed, write to [email protected]. We update guides on the date shown under their title and keep the previous figures in the page history.