How Competitor Price Tracking Drives Smarter Pricing Strategies

Many industries have reached unprecedented levels of competition, including retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Thus, companies in these fields cannot simply focus on their own marketing, sales, and pricing strategies. They need to keep a close eye on their competitors and use that data to inform their decisions.

This, in a nutshell, is the concept of competitor price tracking. It is an age-old business strategy, used by generations of enterprises to help them make the right pricing decisions and increase market share. These days, this technique is easier than ever to employ and extract value from, thanks to online price and promotion tracking tools.

In this guide, we will explore what competitor price tracking is, its benefits, and how to implement it.

What is Competitor Price Tracking?

At its core, competitor price tracking is exactly what it sounds like – monitoring the prices at which your rivals sell their products and services. More specifically, nowadays, it involves continuous and systematic rival price monitoring, often across a range of online channels, like online stores, marketplaces, and so on.

Additionally, modern competitor price tracking is more comprehensive than it once was. In the past, it only involved checking rivals’ prices at set intervals. Many companies use a competitor price tracking tool like Assosia to do much more than merely check prices. These tools also offer numerous other functions, like:

Analyse price movement over time to spot trends
Alerting the user when rivals launch sales or promotional events
Monitoring stock levels of specific, in-demand products

In the most competitive industries, these processes are arguably no longer optional. Instead, they are imperative. Companies need this kind of detailed pricing data to adjust their pricing strategies accordingly, remain competitive, plan sales events, and more.

Why is Competitor Price Tracking Crucial for Large Enterprises?

Businesses at all levels can benefit from competitor price tracking. However, it is arguably most important for large enterprises – those that have established themselves as industry leaders, claimed their market share, and wish to maintain their standing or build upon it.

Here are some key reasons why:

Staying Competitive

Competition can feel particularly intense for the brands at the top of the food chain. Not only do they have to fend off young upstart businesses, but they also manage rivalries with other industry leaders like themselves.

In addition, the market is always changing. Competitors can launch discounts at the drop of a hat, supply and demand levels can shift, and the popularity of certain products can rise and fall. Keeping a close eye on price trends and changes, with the help of a competitor price tracking portal or solution, is crucial for responding quickly to such changes and maintaining ground in the market.

Optimise Pricing Strategies

One of the main ways smaller businesses siphon business away from bigger brands is by undercutting them. They keep their prices just low enough to provide a more attractive proposition. Many larger enterprises also employ the same technique. For example, we often see leading brands matching or undercutting one another’s prices in the supermarket industry.

If you are not aware of the pricing models of other brands, you could gradually see your customer base and sales figures dwindle, without knowing what action to take. Investing in competitor price tracking software gives your company the data to make smart decisions when adjusting your prices at the right times to drive sales and success.

Understand Market Dynamics

As mentioned, today’s competitor price tracking solutions can do much more than spot-check rival prices. They can also track market trends and changes, generate reports on rival sales and promotions, and more. A tool like Assosia, for example, offers numerous helpful functions for large-scale firms in fields like the retail industry and FMCG.

Large firms are better equipped to understand and monitor the ever-shifting dynamics of their markets by utilising the functions of a competitor price tracking tool. It helps them spot patterns and trends, and predict future shifts, so they can adjust to secure their standing in the market.

Navigate Complex Climates

Even in the best of times, markets constantly shift. During your business’ lifecycle, there may be periods when the markets are even more unpredictable, such as periods of economic uncertainty and recessions, for example, or during periods of global crisis, like pandemics.

Many businesses – even large and well-established ones – struggle to survive such uncertain times, often because they lack the data and clarity to make the right sales and pricing strategy calls. Again, a competitor price tracking tool can be an invaluable solution here, helping to cut through the chaos and shed light on uncertain, unpredictable markets.

Key Benefits of Implementing Competitor Price Tracking

We can divide the many benefits of competitor price tracking solutions into two core groups:

Retail Insights & Tracking: Leading pricing tools, like Assosia, provide invaluable pricing insights and real-time analysis. They track prices across channels – both online and in physical locations – to keep you informed of changes. They also track promotions and measure their effectiveness. These insights can help firms build more effective strategies of their own.
Retail Benchmarking: The best competitor price trackers also help you understand the “benchmarks” or standards across your industry – average prices, trends, inflation, etc. Through this data, you can conduct retail audits, measure your firm’s metrics against the competition, and spot gaps to exploit or give you an advantage.

Driving Smarter Pricing Strategies with Competitor Price Tracking Tools

Next, to fully understand how competitor price tracking provides valuable, tangible benefits for big businesses, let’s look at a real-world example of this process in action.

Assosia was tasked by one of the largest retail firms to conduct daily offline (in-store) price and promotion tracking at various retailers and across numerous categories of products. The Assosia team dispatched agents to multiple retailers throughout the week, tracking the prices of numerous products daily and monthly.

The client could use the data to remain abreast of price changes among their rivals. They received all the data they needed to ensure competitors could not undercut or employ other strategies to lure customers. Plus, they could make their price adjustments informally and logically.

Numerous large-scale businesses in varied fields like dairy and hair care have relied on the Assosia team and competitor price tracking software to monitor price changes, gain market share, improve strategic planning, and respond more quickly to changes across their market.

Competitor Price Tracking – Essential for Success in Competitive Markets

Overall, there’s ample evidence that these days, competitor price tracking is not an “optional extra” for enterprises in fields like FMCG, retail, and e-commerce. It’s a vital technology providing critical, invaluable information for companies, particularly large enterprises, to help them maintain and grow their market shares and fine-tune their pricing strategies. In today’s increasingly competitive landscape, this is more important than ever.

Consider investing in your competitor’s price tracking portal today. Contact the Assosia team to learn more.