Stay Ahead of the Curve- Retail Price Monitoring Techniques

Blog
John Doe
John Doe
 | 
17.10.2023

Retail price monitoring involves tracking and analyzing prices to stay competitive and informed in the ever-changing market.

In every retail business may it be an online one or an offline one, owners find it challenging to identify a price that changes according to the customer choices and other variables. Moreover, in a fiercely competitive market, it is essential for a business, regardless of the industry, to stay ahead. They must have an edge over the competitors not only in terms of product/ service features but also in terms of pricing. It’s the pricing that distinguishes one brand from the other where everyone in the market is selling similar products.

Keeping an eye on the retail prices of the competitors offers a better idea of where to start and determine your own pricing strategy. Today, in this blog we will deep dive into the core concept of retail price monitoring and help you choose better.

What is Retail Price Monitoring?

The process of regularly tracking and analyzing the prices of the products/ services sold by the competitors is termed retail price monitoring. This data helps a business maintain its position in the market, adjust its prices, and drive more sales to the business. Though price monitoring is important for every sector, a few sectors such as travel can benefit from it significantly as they witness price fluctuations and the customers are sensitive to minor price changes as well.

How is It Important to Monitor the Price for Retailers?

There are several benefits of online price monitoring for a business. Here’s a look at a few:

1.  Internal Analysis

Monitoring the pricing history enables a business to reflect upon the market strategy of their business. Retail price monitoring by PriceIntelGuru can help you create the best pricing strategy and optimize the profits along with product rotation and brand value. Let us explain with an example. For instance, you are in a manufacturing business and you want to reach as many customers as possible. You want to sell it to end users and also to the distributors in selected locations. Now, without concrete software or solutions in place, you won’t get an accurate idea about the sales. You might be actually competing with your own distributors. So, to avoid such mishaps, you need retail price monitoring where everything can be defined and in turn, can be monitored. Now, isn’t that wonderful? This is truly the new way to do business.

2.  Market Competition Analysis

Monitoring the price charged by the competitors enables a business to make their pricing decisions accordingly. It is an essential part of the market report. Depending on the information collected such as product to price ratio and the target group, a business gets insight on their market positioning.

Importance of Price Monitoring

As a retailer or e-commerce business, you must keep a tab on the competitors and pricing is one of the most important factors. Customers today are pretty smart and have access to various platforms for price comparison. They check the price of the same product across various platforms within seconds while buying online. Hence, retailers and e-commerce businesses need to stay ahead of their competitors if they don’t want to lose their customers.

It can be tough to monitor the prices manually; hence, the task should be assigned to the price monitoring tool. With the help of automation, it is easy to see when the competitors raise or lower the price of products in real time. Also, you can rest assured about the accuracy of the data which help in making effective pricing strategies.

Price and product price monitoring helps in predicting future sales and managing the inventory in a better way.

How Can Retailers Leverage Price Monitoring and Maximize Profits?

With the help of retail price monitoring software, a business can get a comprehensive real-time picture of market changes, price updates, and demand trends. Based on this data and insight they can make necessary changes in their pricing strategy to promote more sales and derive profits.

Using an automated tool ensures that all information is available on a single platform. In fact, a business can automate the entire process and update the prices of the products across the channels in real time.

  1. A business can track competitor price changes across the marketplaces and standalone websites.
  2. They can analyze their prices as compared to the competitors for similar products/ services in real-time for optimization.
  3. They can compare the price of exact matches for branded and private labels.
  4. A business can benefit from the competitor stock-outs and change their prices for optimum gains.
  5. They can review and analyze their pricing strategy with accurate and actionable data.
  6. Leverage historic data for predicting demand and adjusting the assortments.
  7. Improve product descriptions for improved visibility.
  8. Increase conversions by offering competitive prices.

Benefits of Retail Price Monitoring

1. Optimal Pricing Strategy

Businesses can make data-driven pricing strategies based on accurate data from competitors. An electronics store might adjust the price of their mobile phone based on how the competitor has lowered their prices.

2. Achieve Dynamic Pricing

With retail price monitoring, one can implement dynamic pricing strategies that consist of adjusting prices in real-time depending on the customer behavior and market conditions. The travel industry is largely dependent on price monitoring and comparison.

3. Improve Customer Satisfaction

Price monitoring helps a business offer improved services for customer satisfaction. A business can price the products fairly which leads to happy customers. 

4. Identify Market Trends

Businesses can identify the market trends and change their pricing strategies accordingly. When a grocery store observes an increasing trend for organic produce, it will respond by expanding its organic product line to capture health-conscious buyers and drive sales growth.

5. Quick Decision- making

With retail price monitoring, a business gets to adapt to the changing trends. Competitive price monitoring offers required data to the business leaders to make quick and accurate decisions in response to the market changes.

What Elements Should You be Monitoring?

Tracking important elements helps a business focus its time and resources where they matter the most.

1.  Pricing Page

It is important to keep track of the reseller pricing pages. Getting an overview of the third-party sellers, their offerings, and charges will give some idea if term obligations are being followed. Map monitoring helps in getting an idea if the minimum standards are being met. Manual checking can be challenging but there are tools that enable you to track the prices as they get updated. Thus, you get notified about the discounts, price cuts, and price increases.

2.  Stock Levels

You can consider keeping a tab on the reseller’s stock levels as it helps ensure that they have a full range of inventory levels for meeting customer needs. By getting an idea about products that are out of stock, one can immediately refresh the stock and resolve any issues.

3.  Reviews

Yet another way of managing third-party sellers is looking at consumer reviews. It gives important insight into how customers feel about the sellers, their attitude about pricing, and whether they are satisfied with the purchase. Automated tools will notify you when new reviews are posted so that you get an insight into the reseller’s behavior.

To design the overall pricing strategy, companies must invest in retail price monitoring tools. It also makes the process organized and accurate.

Take the Lead and Start Tracking Your Competitors

Every business has a close eye on their competitors. It is significantly important to not get carried away with that. You need to understand the products and services you give and how you provide solutions to your customers and then monitor the competition. This will help you make informed decisions. Retail price monitoring will guide you on the right path without losing track of your business models. Don’t wait to take charge and let PriceIntelGuru help you in the same. Contact us or Schedule a free demo today!