Read the evidence. Ask a better business question.
Three practical briefs for Philippine teams. These are educational analyses, not customer results, investment advice or sales forecasts.
Prepared by InsightPulseAI · 6 November 2026 · Method notes v1. Dated observations may be revised by their publisher. Follow the source and current explorer before using them.
1. Rising prices are a question for your margin report.
PSA OpenSTAT reported headline inflation of 7.8% for October 2026 in its 5 November snapshot. This is the year-on-year change in the national consumer-price index, not a 7.8% increase in your own supplier costs.
Decision to investigate: compare your purchase prices, selling prices and units sold over consistent periods. Separate price changes from changes in the mix of goods sold. Review food and all-items indices separately where relevant.
Bring: a monthly sales and purchasing summary, units, returns and product definitions. Useful output: a reconciled margin report and a list of differences requiring explanation.
Limit: a national price index cannot establish category demand, local affordability or the cause of a business’s sales change.
2. Employment rates answer different planning questions.
Unemployment describes people without work within the labor force. Underemployment concerns employed people who want additional work or hours. They have different denominators and must not be added together.
Decision to investigate: compare local recruitment experience, vacancies and scheduled hours with the national context. A national rate does not tell you whether a specific skill is available in your city.
Bring: aggregated vacancy, hiring and scheduling figures with matching periods; leave out individual employee records. Useful output: a workforce-planning brief that distinguishes national context from your own evidence.
Limit: employment and price releases can describe different months. Keep observation period, source update and retrieval date separate.
3. A lower headline price is not yet a comparable offer.
A decision rule for a proposed Philippine promotion pilot: match the exact product and pack, currency, location, eligibility and validity before comparing advertised prices. The walkthrough uses fictional offers only.
Decision to investigate: is the apparent difference explained by pack size, membership or a different location? A failed source check does not establish that an offer ended, and an advertised price does not prove stock or a completed transaction.
Bring: a narrow product list, permitted retailer sources and the locations that matter. Proposed output: a dated evidence register, reviewed comparisons and an explicit coverage report.
Limit: no promotion dataset or market finding is published. Source permissions, collection and independent pilot acceptance remain pending.
