Categories
A good starting point for categories is the Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP), published by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat.
Quote from the document:
The Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) is the international reference classification of household expenditure. The objective of COICOP is to provide a framework of homogeneous categories of goods and services, which are considered a function or purpose of household consumption expenditure.
COICOP is an integral part of the System of National Accounts (SNA), but it is also used in several other statistical areas, such as: household expenditure statistics based on household budget surveys and the analysis of living standards; consumer price indi- ces; international comparisons of gross domestic product (GDP) and its component expenditures through purchasing power parities; and statistics relating to culture, sports, food, health, and tourism.
The idea of classifying household consumption expenditure at the international level dates back to the year 1923 and resulted three years later into the first, still very broad classification of household expenditure elaborated by the International Confer- ence of Labour Statisticians. When the first version of the SNA was published in 1953, it contained also a classification of private consumption expenditure, which then evolved with each new version of the SNA.
Available at: