How to Conduct a Competitive Pricing Analysis for Better Market Positioning

To enjoy long-term success in global business – particularly the most competitive ones, like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and retail – it is vital to constantly monitor, assess, and benchmark your business against your competitors. Competitive pricing analysis is an important part of this process, providing insights into how your business’ prices match your competitors ‘ and the market at large.

Conducting pricing competitive analysis allows you to gain the data you need to make smarter pricing decisions, plan promos, and adjust prices up or down accordingly to improve performance. This is particularly valuable for larger, established enterprises, which must be tactical, precise, and proactive with pricing shifts to achieve their business goals.

More so than for B2C or ecommerce businesses, competitive pricing analysis and price strategy for international enterprises go hand-in-hand, as the biggest brands cannot afford to react to market changes as they happen. Instead, they must constantly acquire data and insights, predict future trends, and pre-empt them to stay ahead in today’s dynamic global retail environments.

As such, every large firm should know how to analyse competitive pricing to achieve benefits like superior market positioning and profitability. We’ll explore that in this guide while providing key elements to achieve a sound pricing strategy.

Defining and Understanding Competitive Pricing Analysis for Large-Scale Brands

Before we detail how to do competitive pricing analysis, it is first important to understand what it is and how it informs your competitor pricing strategy.

What Is Competitor Pricing?

At the most basic level, competitor pricing is when brands align the prices of their goods and services to compete favourably with others in their bsiness sector. They might, for example, price match – align their prices with similar companies (to remain a viable option in the eyes of consumers) – or price undercut (making sure their prices are just slightly lower than their main rivals).

However, there is much more to modern-day competitor pricing strategy than that, especially for large businesses. These large-scale firms do not merely track the prices of their main rivals and adjust them to match, they also adopt multi-layered strategies of retail competitor analysis, price tracking, and adjustment, including:

Tracking direct competitors’ prices (businesses of similar standing, offering similar products to the same customer base) and indirect competitors (firms that are either much smaller, larger, or operate in different niches) to get a broad picture of the market landscape.
Determining the average customer’s entire value proposition with competitor monitoring and sampling. That is to say, not just price points, but also other factors that impact customer journeys and choices, like market positioning, customer support, and unique elements that may attract a customer to the business.
Identifying prime opportunities for pricing shifts to maximise profit margins. Often, this will involve tracking prices across numerous channels and competitors over broad periods and using an analytical aid, like Assosia, to spot trends and predict upcoming shifts.

In other words, for large enterprises, competitive pricing analysis goes much deeper than simply looking at how much rivals charge for the same or similar products. It is a holistic, multi-pronged practice that considers many data points – not just prices – to help firms make the most tactical and well-timed price decisions, which may also inform marketing and positioning strategies.

How to Do Competitive Pricing Analysis for Global Brands (4 Easy Steps)

For global brands, carrying out competitive pricing analysis demands much more thorough preparation and careful execution than it does for a start-up or small business. However, the entire process and the end goal – to deliver the most useful results – can still be broken down into four straightforward steps.

First, start by drawing up lists of key competitors to analyse. Generally, it is best to focus on those whose products and operations are most closely related to your company. Focus next on brands that have a similar standing and market share as yours to better align the pricing analysis.

Conduct initial research into these companies, listing key information like market presence, years they have been in operation, total revenue, number of locations, etc. This will help you better understand and contextualise the data you gather once your competitive pricing analysis is underway. After that, the next steps include:

Defining Selection Criteria

To make your competitive pricing analysis as effective and useful as possible, you must think about your objectives from the outset. What do you want to gain? Which pieces of data do you wish to track that will deliver the most useful insights?

Answer those questions, and you should find it much easier to hone in on the precise selection criteria that will lead you to the best direct and indirect competitors from which to gain insight. Consider, for instance, whether you want to focus on local, regional, or global rivals, and use market intelligence solutions, such as Assosia, to highlight key players from that range.

Collect Data Across Multiple Channels

To conduct an effective pricing competitive analysis, you first need to acquire data to analyse. Smaller firms often focus purely on scraping their rivals’ online stores to track the prices they offer for goods and services. However, larger firms should take a broader approach like use of a comprehensive pricing tool for retailers, manufacturers and suppliers.

Utilise a diverse range of data sources. That includes online price checks, retail audits, and offline (in-store) checks. Use price comparison tools, retail apps, and analytical aids, like Assosia, to deliver the most timely, accurate data, even in dynamic, shifting markets like retail and e-commerce.

Organising and Structuring Collected Pricing Data

Often, at the end of your data collection phase, you may end up with a large set of data that lacks structure or organisation. You will therefore need to “clean up” – that is, strip out irrelevant or less pertinent data – and organise the remaining information before you can begin analysing it correctly.

A good way to go about this is to create standardised templates you can use each time you conduct pricing competitive analysis. It is often best to rely on helpful digital platforms like Assosia to assist with this, as they can save you time and energy and mitigate the risks of human error in constructing appropriate templates and automatically sorting data for you.

Analysing and Benchmarking Competitor Pricing Strategies

Lastly comes the analysis itself. There are many ways to dig into pricing, sales, promotion, and market data gathered about your rivals. You can compare base prices across similar products, look into discounting and promotional trends, or dig into metrics like price elasticity and sensitivity, to name a few techniques.

You could even look into how prices differ according to geographical region, sales channel, or season to spot trends and patterns more easily and then compare them against your own prices. Again, it is best to employ a capable competitive pricing analysis tool like Assosia to do all of this.

Competitive Pricing Analysis and Price Strategy for Strategic Advantages

As mentioned earlier, competitive pricing analysis and price strategy are closely connected. This analysis gives you the insights needed to build or improve your pricing approach. The more effective and insightful your analysis is, the more your pricing strategy will benefit. Companies that master this can achieve accurate, up-to-date price leadership, and all the advantages that it brings, such as:

Discovering opportunities for shelf advantage via strategic price adjustments or promos
Aligning your pricing strategy with broader brand positioning and long-term goals
Optimising sales according to competitor insights, via Assosia’s promotion tracking, for example
Leveraging price shifts to build or maintain market share
Strengthening understanding of how price influences consumer perceptions and brand equity

Leveraging Competitive Insights for Enhanced Market Positioning

The biggest enterprises can also adjust and fine-tune their market positioning with pricing insights.

For example, your brand may be positioned as more of a premium, high-end retailer. As such, you may not necessarily want to indulge in undercutting prices or excessive promotions to gain an edge on your rivals, even if their prices are generally lower than yours.

Instead, identify pricing gaps and exploit market opportunities that align with your positioning, to remain consistent in the eyes of your brand’s customers. This may involve:

Offering bundles, packages, or add-on strategies to provide more competitive rates without compromising your position

Adapting your messaging and product positioning in accordance with price comparisons, to highlight areas in which your firm offers the best value

Reacting effectively and rapidly to competitor price shifts, so you reduce the risk of being priced out of business

Using strategic pricing and promotional events at the right times to reinforce brand value and maintain customer acquisition and retention rates

The Role of Data and Technology in Competitive Pricing Analysis for Global Operations

At the global level, it is not enough to track and analyse prices manually. You need cutting-edge digital tools and technological infrastructure to continually collate, organise, and dig into pricing data. This is the only way to achieve genuine real-time price monitoring, receive instant alerts when important price shifts occur, and realise complete integration of pricing data with sales, demand planning, inventory, etc.

Overcoming Challenges of Pricing Analysis with Assosia

Carrying out a thorough competitive pricing analysis for the largest enterprises is often challenging. For instance, a common issue with offline price tracking is that while monitoring prices on online stores is quick and easy, getting in-store price information across different locations and regions is often much more time-consuming and intensive.

A trusted pricing analysis partner like Assosia can help with that. Assosia has, for example, carried out regular offline price tracking and analysis for leading retail firms. This analysis includes in-store visits, manual price logging, and the generation of insightful reports to deliver to the client, keeping them up-to-date on key price metrics and changes.

These are a few ways Assosia helps clients deal with data gaps and overcome problems with obtaining key information. We can help you better understand regional, location or time-based pricing dynamics, quickly delivering the data you need to create effective, long-term pricing strategies while complying with legal and ethical data collection standards.

Conclusion: Invest in Pricing Analysis Today

The keys to effective competitive pricing analysis are clear: identify the competitors you wish to analyse, collate relevant data using the right tools and aids available, organise that data, and then analyse it to obtain the insights you need. It can be a laborious process, but it is a vital one. With the help of trusted partners and solutions like Assosia, it becomes far easier and more rewarding.

So, if you are not doing so already, make competitive pricing analysis an integral part of your business operations today. With the help of Assosia, your firm can continue to maximise its ROI and enjoy consistent success, even in the most competitive global markets.