Cracking The Retailer Formula Of Channel Price Intelligence

Channel pricing intelligence can be defined as a data-driven mechanism. It helps track, monitor, and analyze market trends. It is also useful for scrutinizing the price movements of competitors. It will be helpful to make informed pricing decisions. Pricing intelligence is premised on innovative data-mining tools. It is also on AI-backed analytics. It will help grasp the nuances of the relevant market. It will help understand consumers’ responses to a price change. It will set a benchmark against the competition to arrive at the ideal price of a product. Pricing intelligence has pertinent benefits for businesses of all scales and types. Its significance is more pressing than ever. Why? Let us find out!

The 21st-century retail landscape is characterized by cutthroat competition. For many businesses, which struggle to stay afloat, intelligent pricing can be useful. It can be the ‘knight in shining armor. It is common knowledge that pricing has been the greatest level for retail revenue. It is also for profit margin. However, simple spreadsheets and manual calculations don’t work today. They aren’t enough to envisage the right pricing strategy. Nowadays, Big Data and Analytics-driven tools are fueled by AI. They are indispensable to developing ‘intelligent pricing.’

Thus, competitive price intelligence enables businesses to introspect about their position. It helps their introspection in the market. Observe competitors, and curate an optimal price regulatory mechanism. It is, indeed, a non-negotiable for entrepreneurial success in 2023. Statistics from Accenture show some important facts, optimally calculating prices in real-time premised on multiple market and customer variables. They have concrete benefits. It shows a 10 to 20 percent improvement in sales and a 5 to 15 percent inflation in revenue. Such numbers are no joke. They have a revolutionary impact on the profit of a retail venture.

Nowadays, price intelligence is not just under the purview of bigwig businesses. Businesses can devise an evolved and comprehensive pricing intelligence strategy. It is by investing in the right technology.

1. Identifying Competitor Benchmarks:

‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’ is an age-old adage. It holds unrivaled significance in the competition and competitive price monitoring retail world. Enterprises must be attuned to every move of their competitors. It is vis-à-vis operations, pricing, and products. At what rate competing brands sell items is crucial to understand. It is, even if it is not an ‘apples-to-apples comparison. It will help build a personalized and feasible pricing strategy. Thus, identifying the competitors you want to benchmark against is the first step. It helps arrive at an intelligent pricing plant. Automated pricing solutions can help you go about competitive and strategic deals. It is on autopilot mode.

2. Devising a Plan for Perceived Value:

Now you have underlined the companies you would like to benchmark. Now we talk about the second step in intelligent pricing. It is about determining how your brand’s personalized pricing strategy. It will help create perceived value in the marketplace. Simply put, perceived value is what pushes consumers to make certain purchases. For instance, shoppers go to Big Bazaar because they think they are getting one of the best deals. Although it may not be true, people keep returning to shop at the retail chain owing to the perceived value.

Building perceived value in pricing can be complex and requires huge data. Attempting to answer specific questions can build the foundation. It is about perceived value in pricing:

• How will the target market respond to a specific price?
• Are people likely to respond better to lower prices?
• Are people willing to splurge more? Is it because they believe they are getting better quality at a pricier price?
• The perceived value in pricing can be a tough nut to crack. However, sure-shot success is guaranteed after you solve the puzzle.

Investing in the right technology is the third step in an intelligent pricing strategy. Manually tracking your competitors’ pricing can take a lot of work. The following requirements for dissecting and analyzing data will help. It will help fully understand where your pricing fits is a tenuous ordeal. Thus, the optimal trajectory is to play smart. You should opt for competitive price intelligence tools. It will help manage your Intel pricing program.

We now know the three steps to an intelligent pricing strategy. It is time to examine the correlation between price intelligence and Big Data.

Big Data has been the ‘retail industry’s tour de force’ in recent years. Data collection and analysis have veritable benefits for retailers. It is of all types and scales. Retailers armed with ‘Big Data’ can pioneer a plethora of trajectories. A study by McKinsey illustrates that Big Data can help retail ventures hire new talent. It is to buy or build sophisticated tools for better data harnessing. It can increase profit margins by up to 60 percent. Thus, Big Data not only facilitates competitive pricing. It also enables retailers to grasp the A to Z of market intelligence.

For instance, Amazon is a giant multinational company. It holds onto customer data at just about every point of interaction. It retains and evaluates data about what people click on. It adds to their baskets (without checking out). It adds to their baskets and checks, what people add to their wishlists, and more. Such a nuanced and meticulous data acquisition approach has enabled Amazon. It has helped them to carve out a unique position in the eCommerce sector. It can skilfully predict customer behavior and interests premised on past behavior. Similarly, Amazon also leverages competitor retailers’ data. It is to create advertising campaigns and set their own prices. Thus, Amazon is the perfect case study on how to co-opt Big Data. It is to become a clairvoyant in the retail sector and gauge every aspect of market intelligence.

Now we have a fair idea of intelligent pricing. So, let us wrap up the article by looking at simple tricks. These will help to reap the best results from competitive channel price intelligence.

Skillful Competitor Identification – You must try to answer the looming question. It will help to gain an edge over the rest using competitive price intelligence. Who else is offering your products, and at what price? In addition, remember that your competition will change. It depends on whether you offer your products online. Whether it is in-store or through both platforms.

Get Pricing Data – Gathering competitors’ pricing information is indispensable. It is for staying ahead of the curve. The right method is to invest in high-quality software solutions. It will make pricing intelligence practical and scalable because of automation. Likewise, you must also choose how frequently you need to get accurate pricing data. It will depend on how frequently your competitor’s pricing changes.

Adept Data Analysis – You can reap the best results from competitive price analysis. You can stay a class apart from the rest is adequate data analysis. You can compare your prices to those of competitors and see how competitive your rates are. Similarly, you can leverage data to determine why your competitors change pricing frequently.

So, there we have it. It is a comprehensive overview of competitive price intelligence and its many dimensions. Big Data, web scrapping, automation, and AI can be the solutions. It can help to excel at intelligent pricing. You can stay a class apart from your competitors.