Consumer Prices for Cheese across Russia

The article presents an analysis of consumer prices for various types of cheese in different regions of the Russian Federation. The research objective was to cluster them based on spatial correlations in consumer prices for hard and soft rennet cheeses, processed cheeses, national cheeses, and feta cheese. The data published by the Federal State Statistics Service Rosstat for 2015-2024 made it possible to calculate variation indicators, global Moran’s I, and local Moran’s I, as well as to design cluster maps. The years of 2023-2024 saw a trend towards increasing variation, which means that the regional disparities in consumer cheese prices were growing. The consumer cheese prices demonstrated statistically significant spatial effects across the country, which made it possible to cluster the regions. The largest one was the cluster of high prices with a positive spatial autocorrelation with prices in the neighboring regions. The southern cluster with low prices and a positive spatial autocorrelation was the leader in terms of the number of subjects. Some atypical regions were spatial outliers with a negative spatial autocorrelation. The resulting cluster map offers new opportunities for solving the current issues faced by the state, businesses, and science.