Top 5 Things to Look for in a Competitive Pricing Platform

Managing the pricing data collected during competitive shops is no easy task. With private labels, rapidly changing online prices, and multiple sources of in-store audits, retail data has become increasingly difficult to translate into market visibility. A competitive pricing platform helps to automate the data collection, apply advanced analytics, and garner insights and value.

The right platform can free up time and resources to invest in other areas and substantially improve market visibility. Here are the top 5 features to look for in a pricing solution:

1. Correlating Online and In-store Pricing

In today’s world of e-commerce, more and more retailers are taking an omni-channel approach to selling. A technology-enabled competitive pricing platform needs to take advantage of advanced web crawling algorithms to acquire this competitive data and correlate it against the data captured by auditors in physical store checks. This enables a more efficient and cost-effective approach to acquiring competitive pricing data.

These web crawls can gather data from dozens of popular online stores to compile the most accurate pricing data. With the right platform, a retailer’s online and in-store pricing data are easy to access and work together to inform their omni-channel strategy.

2. Customized KVI Lists Based on Statistical Analysis

Historically, cost and timeliness have made it difficult to acquire quality competitive data. Given the dynamic nature of the retail environment, static KVI lists are not responsive enough to the realities of where to focus competitive pricing efforts across various geographies and store-specific categories. The retailer needs a pricing platform that allows them to shift from static KVI lists to ones that are easily customized by banner or even by specific store. Rather than taking a blanket approach, the critical decisions of where, what and when to comp shop should be based on strategic statistical analysis.

By monitoring how often products change prices at a competitor, a retailer can adjust their price check frequency to areas that require more visibility. For example, if a retailer is doing weekly checks on a KVI and then find that their competitors’ prices only change every few months, they can adapt their competitive shop in response. The resources spent monitoring a slow-moving item like hot sauce at six competitors every week can be allocated to a more price-sensitive area like eggs or dairy products.

3. Product Attributes

With the rise of private labels, competitive pricing platforms must be able to compare product attributes. In traditional competitive shop programs, as many as 40% of items go unaccounted for because there is no UPC match. To solve this problem, competitive pricing platforms must be able to utilize visual data capture technology and advanced character recognition to compare product attributes. This allows product linking to occur not just by UPC, but also by key attributes and statement of ingredient similarities, for example, gluten-free and organic. This creates a more accurate picture of a competitor’s private label pricing strategy and their total value proposition.

A recent article by Digiday shows that retailers are rapidly expanding their private label selections. Some retailers now offer dozens of different private labels, and manually matching these products takes considerable time and effort. Automation and product attributes allow retailers quickly get relevant pricing data on competing items.

4. Quality Assurance Workflow

A competitive pricing platform must also have a strong quality assurance workflow. With today’s mobile app-enabled technology, automated processes can greatly reduce manual errors and ensure that only quality data is being captured at shelf edge. Additionally, such apps can compare shelf data against historical records, flagging any SKU pricing that seems historically unreasonable.

Reducing the time between data collection and pricing decisions is critical to getting the full value of the competitive shop. When QA takes too long, the data that is collected becomes stale and often inaccurate. Reducing errors makes pricing data more useful, especially when a retailer is competing against e-commerce sites that can make price changes instantly.

5. Precise and Accurate Data

A competitive pricing platform must have the ability to collect precise and accurate pricing data. This allows retailers to target competitive shops, optimize frequency, and specify which items to focus on within regions or individual stores.

Rather than casting a wide net to see what useful data gets brought in, retailers must be able to get a global look at the actions of their competitors while also drilling down to store-specific opportunities. When they have both views, they can see clearly where they are winning and losing.

A competitive pricing platform makes it simple to manage data collected through web crawls and in-store audits. By having prices and advanced analytics connected in a central system, retailers have the ability to review their competitors’ strategies and adjust their own. To learn more about the science driving our analytics, you can request our White Paper here.