Almost half of our lists have a "Store Number" column, and we feel this extra information can be very valuable to you in your analysis of the data. However, there are technical reasons why this number may not match the internal store numbering system within that company. Here are two examples that illustrate our extraction and why we cannot make a guarantee on it's accuracy:
First, if you search your zip code on Best Buy's website (example here), you will see that next to the store names is a visual indicator that indicate exactly which store number that location represents (i.e. "LACEY WA (Store 1043)"). However, on other websites, such as Walmart.com (example here), you will notice that the store number is not indicated on the web page, but rather in the URL itself (walmart.com/store/3525). We will still collect this as the store number because we believe it is more likely than not to be the actual store number. We have independently confirmed in Walmart's case that this is correct, however, there may be other lists where that number is simply an ID assigned to that particular web page and does not reflect the internal store numbering system.
We apologize for any confusion this causes, but we have decided it is worth the risk of collecting any numbering we find, because it in our testing, it has been correct in the large majority of cases. If you have specific concerns about the quality of the store number in a particular list, we would recommend you download the sample file in order to check ahead of time if it matches. And if you find a mismatch, we would definitely appreciate the feedback, however, it is unlikely that we will be able to replace it with the correct store numbers, as that was probably the only number available at the primary source.
