Couriers and Messengers Services Price Index (CMSPI)

Detailed information for September 2009

The Couriers and Messengers Services Price Index (CMSPI) is a monthly price index measuring the change over time in prices for courier and messenger services provided by long and short distance delivery companies to Canadian-based business clients.

Data release - October 29, 2009

• Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s)
• Description
• Data sources and methodology
• Data accuracy

Description

The Couriers and Messengers Services Price Index (CMSPI) is a monthly price index measuring the change over time in prices for courier and messenger services provided by long and short distance delivery companies to Canadian-based business clients. The courier services portion includes deliveries within and between Canadian cities and provinces/territories, as well as some international deliveries. The local messenger portion tracks price change for within-city deliveries only. The CMSPI series is a useful indicator of economic activity for the couriers and messengers services industry.

Statistical activity

These indexes are a part of the Services Producer Price Index program (SPPI) at Statistics Canada.

The SPPI program develops and produces price indexes for a wide range of business service categories. This initiative fills an important data gap in the area of economic statistics and has resulted in a more comprehensive set of service price indexes. It also allows Statistics Canada to produce more accurate estimates of real value added of the Gross Domestic Product and changes in productivity.

Reference period: The time period for which the CMSPI equals 100; currently this is the year 2003.

Collection period: The last two weeks of the reference month and the two weeks following the end of the reference month.

Subjects

• Prices and price indexes
• Service price indexes
• Transportation

Data sources and methodology

Target population

Coverage for the CMSPI targets the largest establishments of the courier sector, as defined by categories 4921 and 4922 of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The courier sector (4921) consists of establishments primarily engaged in providing air, surface or combined courier delivery services. Courier establishments of the Post Office are included. Local messengers (4922) comprise establishments primarily engaged in providing messenger and delivery services of small parcels within a single urban area. Establishment engaged in the delivery of letters and documents, such as legal documents, often by bicycle or on foot; the delivery of small parcels such as take-out restaurant meals, alcoholic beverages and groceries, on a fee basis, usually by small truck or van, are included.

• Additional documentation

Instrument design

The telephone interview questions were designed in consultation with industry specialists and businesses.

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a longitudinal design.

In the case of couriers, the top five companies in Canada are selected to represent the industry. They alone account for approximately 80% of the operating revenue generated by the courier industry. For the local messenger portion, a subjective sample of establishments is chosen to provide provincial/territorial representation, although the index is published at the national level only.

Data sources

Responding to this survey is mandatory.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents and derived from other Statistics Canada surveys.

The data used to produce the CMSPI comes from several sources. In the case of couriers, price information is collected from company websites, where individual company rates or pricing schedules are available for downloading. In some cases, 'rate-finders', or online invoice calculators, are used to obtain price estimates. For local messengers, prices are collected by telephone interview.

View the Questionnaire(s) and reporting guide(s) .

Imputation

For a price that is missing or late, a proxy price can be used or the most current price is carried forward.

Estimation

Prices

Prices are collected monthly for a detailed set of price specifications covering geography (i.e. origin and destination of service), type of parcel and type of service. The prices collected cover delivery services only. They exclude taxes and assessorial charges (such as customs brokerage, third party billing or call tag services) and other charges (e.g., cargo services, pick-up service charges, trace charges). For couriers, there are two service categories--overnight or next day, and other (two days or more). The industry will often refer to these as 'express service' and 'ground service' respectively. For local messengers, prices are collected for delivery time of one hour or less, and delivery time of three to four hours.

Weights

The aggregation weights for the CMSPI are derived from the micro-data obtained through Statistics Canada's Survey of Couriers and Local Messengers Industry 2000. In the case of couriers, the geometric mean is calculated for the price relatives for the specified types of parcels for each company. Next, the shares of revenues based on the type of service (overnight/next day versus other) are used to aggregate up to the domestic and international destination levels, and then these series are combined to produce the price index for each company. At the company level, the re-calculated shares for each company are used to produce the final price index series for couriers. The re-calculated company shares reflect the relative shares of total operating revenues for only the top five companies.

For local messengers, the geometric mean of price relatives for two types of service is calculated (delivery time of one hour or less, and delivery time of three to four hours) to produce a company-level index. The provincial or territorial weights are used to aggregate up to a national index.

The shares of total operating revenue from delivery services are used to combine the price index for couriers and the price index for local messengers to arrive at the overall index for NAICS 492 Couriers and Messengers.

Quality evaluation

The quality of this index is maintained through the expertise of the few trained analysts assigned to it. They develop a thorough knowledge of the domain, which is supplemented by outside personal contacts for particular goods or services. Much time and effort is devoted to detecting and following up unusual fluctuations over time in the pricing patterns of goods and services. Prior to dissemination, the price indexes are analyzed and historic trends reviewed.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

Collected data are converted to price indexes and data are released as such, so that it is not possible to identify the suppliers of raw prices.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

The CMSPI allows the comparison, in percentage terms, of prices in any given time period to prices in the official base period, which at present is 2003 = 100.

The most recent six months of published indexes are subject to revision.

Data accuracy

The data accuracy of the CMSPI is judged to be high. The response rate is close to 100%.

For Couriers, cut-off sampling is employed, where a census of units is taken above a size threshold (or cut-off line). With cut-off sampling, there is a selection bias because the lowest part of the population is not considered for sampling. However, because the largest units are selected, the bias is by design negligible. Because it is a census above the size threshold, no sampling variance is computed.

For local messengers, cut-off sampling is predominantly used, with subjective sampling being employed in a few cases for very sparse geographies (i.e. provinces and territories). Subjective sampling in this case refers to selecting respondents on the basis of geography and not necessarily on their size.

Confidence intervals are not estimated, due to the sampling procedures used and the longitudinal nature of price index series.