In economics a customer basket, market basket or commodity basket is a set of different amounts of different goods and possibly services. The commodity basket will contain goods and services a typical consumer will likely need. Commodity baskets can be used for two things: First, the price level of two economies can be compared. Secondly, using the same baseket, it is possible to show how prices change over time. The amount of money needed to buy everything in the basket, over time, is called consumer price index. 