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The textbook by Mankiw.

The consumer price index is a single number that measures the overall cost of living, but it is based on thousands of prices for individual goods and services. To collect the raw data with which the index is constructed, hundreds of government workers go store to store every month. They check prices, write them down, and then send their reports into a central office, where the CPI is computed.

Explain please what the phrase 'go store' means. Maybe the government workers are officials whose duties are to check prices in shops and take account of them.

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  • "Now if you've ever been down to New Orleans \ Then you can understand just what I mean \ All through the week, it's quiet as a mouse \ But on Saturday night, they go from house to house" – CowperKettle Nov 23 '14 at 16:32
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    Sometimes you may see this with store-to-store hyphenated, like in this news article: BOPIS - Buy Online Pay In Store. According to one report BOPIS could have a huge factor for shoppers who want specific items but don't want to either face the crowds or go store-to-store looking for specific products. – J.R.♦ Nov 23 '14 at 17:57
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"To go store to store" means "to go to many stores, one after another."

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  • Thank you. I am surprised that there is no preposition between go and store. I wonder whether this is common usage in formal speech. – user11470 Nov 23 '14 at 15:08
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    One could also say "go from store to store" – Julian Rosen Nov 23 '14 at 15:13
  • That's why I've asked about this here. I would also say 'go from store to store'. – user11470 Nov 23 '14 at 15:21
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    Colloquially, 'go store to store' works well. The 'from' is implicit to a native speaker. Another example, where the author should have left a word implicit rather than explicit is towards the end of the same passage "...write them down, and then send..." I really wish they'd left out the 'and' – gone fishin' again. Nov 23 '14 at 17:02
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"Go store to store" means the same thing as "go house to house", but in reference to stores. :)

It means "go from one store to the next store."

It might help if you think of it as being in two parts - "go", and "store to store".

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'To go to the store' means to go shopping. It is not equivalent to 'to go from store to store' nor to 'to go from shop to shop'. Even if one were going to only one shop, like the grocery store, for example, one would say 'I am going to the store'. In ordinary English 'a shop' and 'a store' can be, and usually are, the same thing, with a preference for using the word 'store', where I come from at any rate (Western Canada).

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    Yes, but the question is about "go[ing] store to store", not "going to the store". – Nathan Tuggy Jan 20 '16 at 5:21

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