Average Selling Price
EasyUpdated: Aug 2, 2025
Practice on:
Problem
Table: Prices
+---------------+---------+
| Column Name | Type |
+---------------+---------+
| product_id | int |
| start_date | date |
| end_date | date |
| price | int |
+---------------+---------+
(product_id, start_date, end_date) is the primary key (combination of columns with unique values) for this table.
Each row of this table indicates the price of the product_id in the period from start_date to end_date.
For each product_id there will be no two overlapping periods. That means there will be no two intersecting periods for the same product_id.
Table: UnitsSold
+---------------+---------+
| Column Name | Type |
+---------------+---------+
| product_id | int |
| purchase_date | date |
| units | int |
+---------------+---------+
This table may contain duplicate rows.
Each row of this table indicates the date, units, and product_id of each product sold.
Write a solution to find the average selling price for each product. average_price should be rounded to 2 decimal places. If a product does not have any sold units, its average selling price is assumed to be 0.
Return the result table in any order.
The result format is in the following example.
Examples
Example 1
Input:
Prices table:
+------------+------------+------------+--------+
| product_id | start_date | end_date | price |
+------------+------------+------------+--------+
| 1 | 2019-02-17 | 2019-02-28 | 5 |
| 1 | 2019-03-01 | 2019-03-22 | 20 |
| 2 | 2019-02-01 | 2019-02-20 | 15 |
| 2 | 2019-02-21 | 2019-03-31 | 30 |
+------------+------------+------------+--------+
UnitsSold table:
+------------+---------------+-------+
| product_id | purchase_date | units |
+------------+---------------+-------+
| 1 | 2019-02-25 | 100 |
| 1 | 2019-03-01 | 15 |
| 2 | 2019-02-10 | 200 |
| 2 | 2019-03-22 | 30 |
+------------+---------------+-------+
Output:
+------------+---------------+
| product_id | average_price |
+------------+---------------+
| 1 | 6.96 |
| 2 | 16.96 |
+------------+---------------+
Explanation:
Average selling price = Total Price of Product / Number of products sold.
Average selling price for product 1 = ((100 * 5) + (15 * 20)) / 115 = 6.96
Average selling price for product 2 = ((200 * 15) + (30 * 30)) / 230 = 16.96
Solution
Method 1 – SQL Join and Aggregation
Intuition
To find the average selling price for each product, we need to join the Prices and UnitsSold tables on product_id and ensure the purchase_date falls within the price's date range. We then calculate the total revenue and total units for each product, and divide to get the average price, rounding to 2 decimal places. If a product has no sales, its average price is 0.
Approach
- Join
UnitsSoldandPricesonproduct_idand wherepurchase_dateis betweenstart_dateandend_date. - For each product, sum up
units * price(total revenue) and sum upunits(total units sold). - Divide total revenue by total units to get the average price, rounding to 2 decimal places.
- Use
COALESCEto handle products with no sales (set average to 0). - Return
product_idandaverage_pricefor all products inPrices.
Code
MySQL
SELECT
p.product_id,
ROUND(COALESCE(SUM(u.units * p.price) / NULLIF(SUM(u.units), 0), 0), 2) AS average_price
FROM Prices p
LEFT JOIN UnitsSold u
ON p.product_id = u.product_id
AND u.purchase_date BETWEEN p.start_date AND p.end_date
GROUP BY p.product_id;
Complexity
- ⏰ Time complexity: O(N), where N is the number of rows in the joined tables.
- 🧺 Space complexity: O(N) for storing intermediate results.