Today’s eCommerce market is more diverse than ever. To reach more people, businesses sell their products through a network of associated partners, third-party marketplaces, and online retailers. Customers were previously connected to only one retailer. Now, they can buy the same thing from multiple merchants and online websites. This is where retailer monitoring comes in. You can utilize retail price monitoring tools to ensure that third-party shops appropriately display your products, including descriptions and prices. Competitive pricing is essential for survival in the current retail industry. 70% of customers believe that competitive pricing is the most significant factor when buying with a particular business. Below is an overview of retail price monitoring, benefits and challenges, how to monitor prices, and what you need to monitor.
What Is Retail Price Monitoring?
Retail price monitoring is the process of continuously tracking a competitor’s product or service prices in order to determine the ideal price for a specific group of products. Competitor price monitoring allows retailers to capitalize on shifting pricing, create competitive prices, gain new consumers, and enhance sales. The procedure requires retailers to undertake a thorough competitive pricing analysis of the various prices of identical products or services. Analyzing these prices allows business owners to keep inside a set pricing limit.
What Are the Advantages of Retail Price Monitoring?
The following are the key advantages of utilizing retail price monitoring:
Stay competitive
Retailers analyze prices to determine what opportunities exist for business growth. After examining competitor’s prices, they can decide the perfect prices for their product to obtain a competitive advantage over similar companies. A retailer can also run sales promotions to attract new consumers and boost sales. Customers will purchase products from discounts to save money and become repeat customers. Pricing monitoring also helps to make your business different from competitors in the market.
Identity gaps
Retail price monitoring can also help you to know market pricing gaps. A price gap is the variation in prices offered by different sellers for the same product or service. Using price comparison websites and other tools, you can identify pricing gaps and modify product prices to align with market trends or position your brand as a premium or value brand according to your pricing strategy.
Improve profit margins
One of the most important benefits of retail price monitoring is improved profit margins. Tracking competitor’s prices allows you to change your strategy to optimize earnings while remaining competitive in the market. For example, if you find that your competitor is selling a product for a lower price, you can change your profit margins and modify prices accordingly. It ensures companies don’t lose revenue while maintaining a reasonable profit margin.
Increase revenue
Competitive price monitoring can improve the financial condition of your company. As you monitor prices, the dynamic pricing approach will help you to raise or lower your rates. It shows you how to cut or raise your prices to increase sales.
For example, if you find that your opponent has little or no similar product, you can raise your prices. Customers will purchase from you. It will bring higher sales than your competitor. You can also take advantage of rush hours. The increased demand for products in your area can bring better financial performance.
Get loyal customers
You can use price-tracking software to help your company develop strong client relationships. Price tracking can help you know what your customers think about your brand. With the help of this, you can offer them good products at your prices and make them return. Customers who receive competitive prices are more likely to return. It will encourage your customers to continue purchasing from your brand, and they will recommend it to others.
What Are the Disadvantages of Retail Price Monitoring?
Here’s a list of things that
Don’t overload data
Given the amount of pricing data associated with price monitoring, it can be difficult to sort through it and get meaningful insights. You should ensure that you use the appropriate tools and procedures to evaluate data and generate insights that will allow them to make informed decisions.
Insufficient information
Another problem in price monitoring is the absence of pricing consistency among different retailers. This feature makes it difficult to compare prices and find market pricing differences. For example, some retailers may provide discounts or specials that are not available to others, skewing the data and making it harder to collect reliable information.
Unjustified prices
Price battles occur when you consistently cut their prices to remain competitive, which can have an important impact on profit margins. This condition can lead to a reach to the bottom and can be harmful to their long-term company.
How Do We Monitor the Prices of Competitors?
Here are the steps to get started with retail price monitoring:
Determine your goal
Before moving into price monitoring, it is important to outline your pricing policy. This process includes identifying your target audience, analyzing their purchasing habits, and determining competitive and profitable prices. By defining your strategy, you can guarantee that your price monitoring activities are directed toward generating insights that are relevant to your company’s goals and objectives.
Know your competitor’s prices
You should constantly monitor competitor price adjustments in order to remain competitive in the market. Tracking prices across many retailers, discovering pricing gaps, and modifying prices according to market changes are all effective approaches to achieve this goal. This allows you to stay ahead of pricing trends and make correct judgments about their strategies.
Choose the right software
You have various options when it comes to price-tracking software. So, your decision should be based on your business objectives and goals. Before making a final decision, make sure the tool is simple to use, interacts with your existing systems, and delivers accurate price data and insights.
Analyze data
Retail price tracking requires collecting huge amounts of data, which can be difficult without the appropriate price monitoring tools and methodologies. To take advantage of this possibility, you should leverage cutting-edge technology to analyze data and generate relevant insights. As a result, businesses are able to identify price industry trends, change their tactics, and make informed decisions to grow their brand.
Know pricing regulations
You should guarantee that your pricing meets legal standards. Aside from following pricing standards, you should make your rates transparent and accurate while avoiding anti-competitive pricing practices. By following legal standards, you can avoid fines and penalties while still maintaining your market reputation.
What Should You Monitor About Your Competitor’s Price?
Here’s what exactly to look for when going for retail price monitoring:
Check category pages
Category pages are highly competitive. Every company wants its website to rank on top. By this, they can be widely recognized, so their product and service are the first things noticed by customers. If you want your brand to rank at the top, you have to monitor the category on your websites. In which category you are ranked in the search engine results? What are the total clicks that are directed to your category pages? Do you receive clicks from paid or organic keywords?
Monitor reviews
Online shoppers often check other customer’s reviews online before making a purchase. They want to know if existing consumers are happy with the product or service they received from your company. They can also know if the product is satisfactory or not. You should have 10-20 reviews on each product page to show that your product is better than your competitor.
Pricing
Product pricing is also an important factor you should keep track of. You should ensure that your product prices are consistent across all retail competitors and third-party marketplaces. Retail pricing monitoring also allows you to determine whether your competitor has put more price on products on its website. After monitoring their prices, you can choose the prices you want to keep for your product. Take the necessary steps to ensure that your customers receive the most competitive pricing from all third-party vendors.
Furthermore, you can also check the following data from competitor’s websites and decide on the pricing of your products.
- SERP Ranking: Are you still on the first page? Where do your competitors rank? Because search engines can strike at any time, SERPs can change unexpectedly. Regular SEO monitoring keeps you ahead of your competitors by alerting you to changes as soon as they occur.
- Price comparisons: You may also use the tool to get pricing from your competitors’ websites. You utilize this data to change your prices, making them more competitive for your target audience.
- Price Uniformity: To assure pricing consistency on your participating retailers’ websites, scrape them. The data will show any differences in pricing between merchants and third-party markets.
- Social media monitoring: It has become an important tool in marketing and advertising. Scraping data from your competitor’s social media accounts allows you to identify techniques that appear to be working successfully. Social media monitoring can also help you generate leads by attracting clients who are dissatisfied with your rivals.
Retail price monitoring is an important component of the retail industry, with numerous advantages for retailers who can keep ahead of trends and change their strategy accordingly. However, pricing monitoring is not without difficulties. To be competitive, retailers must overcome data overload, a lack of uniformity, and pricing wars.
Price monitoring software can assist them in achieving this goal. Retailers can use retail price tracking to grow their business and stay competitive by adhering to best practices and remaining legally compliant. Rubick.ai offers a cutting-edge pricing intelligence service that allows merchants to monitor competition prices, acquire insights, and make smart pricing decisions.
