Retail price dynamics and retailer heterogeneity: UK evidence

•We analyse 230,000 food prices obtained from barcode scanners in UK supermarkets.•We propose new methods to determine underlying reference prices.•For the sample as a whole, the implied duration of reference prices is 14 weeks.•There is considerable retailer heterogeneity in the duration of reference prices.•Decomposing price dynamics shows there is wide variation across retailers.

We examine retailer heterogeneity in price adjustment in UK supermarkets. Considerable variation in the price change frequency of identically bar-coded products among retail chains is found. Decomposition analysis suggests that price adjustment is evenly split between sales and reference prices with substantive variation across retailers.