Ever wonder why your sales are comparatively low in comparison to your competitors even when your product prices are lower than them. Now we need to understand that in todays era, customers don't want lowest prices they want right prices with value to money deals. So if you are lowering your prices or cutting of your profits to attract customers and more sales then you are using the wrong technique.
Then what should you do?
The question must have surfaced in your mind multiple times, but never gets a suitable answer.
You are on the right place to get those answers, as we will discuss about how to price a products to attract customers and lead the market with Price Intelligence.
Now you must be wondering what is Price Intelligence, well no worries, we will explain the term and how to implement pricing strategy with price intelligence for greater outcome.
What is Price Intelligence
Price Intelligence is a data driven technique which include data collection, data analysis and utilizing data to understand trends of market, competitors strategy and customers behavior to implement optimum price strategy.
In simple words we can say that, price intelligence is the technique of collecting data to analyze it, so that you can utilize the data to learn or understand about your market trends, competitors strategy and customers behaviors, so that you can make proper price strategy to gain most profit and attract customer regularly. This also helps us to understand pricing opportunities and risk of setting certain prices. Price Intelligence is not just knowing what price to set but also the knowledge of when and where to set them, for example Apple are sold cheaper in USA than some of the Asian Country as the demand and brand value of the country.
Why to Use Price Intelligence
In the era where customers is most unpredictable and can lean towards anybody for demand setting wrong prices on your product can be a knife which can cut the threads of your customer. In today's world consumers check and compare prices from multiple platforms to get the best deal, it is important to retain your customers and attract more.
But how?
Without price intelligence you would be either set your prices higher than your competitors or lower than them but each of these actions have their own consequences.
Like if your set your price high, then there are chances of losing customers who will be attracted towards your competitors who are providing the same product on lower prices. On the other hand, if you are selling your product on lower prices, then there are chances that you are losing your potential profits and sometime it can diorites the brand value as customers can doubt your products quality.
But with Price Intelligence you can understand what customers are demand and how much they are ready to pay as well what other things you can tag in to make your offer more attractive and enticing.
Who Uses Price Intelligence
In todays market everyone is using Price Intelligence, either they are customers, or manufacturers or just a retailer because they wanted to have the best deal on the basis of prices and quality, but there are some industries where Price Intelligence is used majorly. Some of those industries are below :
E-Commerce Retailers
All the retailers who wanted to expand their cloud business uses price intelligence to create tempting offers according to the dynamics of the market and seasons, so they get an head start from their competitors, especially when customers can compare different platforms with just one click.
Brand and Manufacturers
Brands and Manufactures uses price intelligence to understand the emerging trends and how much profit margin can they get even when they provide a considerable offer to their customers. Other than that they also collects the data of their competitor to understand what type of products customers are happy with and at what cost?
In other words, price intelligence works as a guiding route for brands and manufactures on what to create and at what cost is used effectively.
Category Managers
Category Manager uses to understand which category of products are more profitable and which are on demand so they can set the rules of dynamic pricing accordingly and plan about their assortments effectively. So they can plan about the products on the bases of category and predicted demand.
Pricing Analysts
Price Intelligence works as a bon for them as they can be more clear and strategize the products prices, as price intelligence guides the pricing analysts about strategy formulating and forecasting the market changes.
Key Components of Price Intelligence Strategy
By now you must have understood the importance of price intelligence and must have wanted to adapt in for make effective business and pricing strategy but it can be only possible if you understand some key components for creating Price Intelligence Strategy .
Identification Right Competitors
The first to make an effective pricing strategy is recognizing right competitors for your. Sometimes the leading giants aren't your biggest competitor, your biggest competitors are those who are stealing you current customers from you. These competitors are not really far from your success route and can become a threat to your business if you didn't kept an eye on them.
Well it doesn't mean you should not be up-to-date about what your field giants are doing as they would be the trend setters and they can affect your business drastically too, but they are not threats for your sales or you cannot compete with them on the basis of prices or quantity, but you can beat your present competitor by hitting them on their weakest.
Tracking leading brands and current competitors sounds too much work? Try [[Competitive Pricing]] to get your data easily.
Matching of Products
After identifying your competitors the next important step is matching their product with your products so you can understand how many similar products are they dealing with and at what price. If you analyze closely you can also understand the demands of each products and profit margin.
Wants to know about Product Automatch in detail, see our knowledgeable article regarding [[Product Auto-Match]] and get our [[Competitor Products Auto-match]] tool for tireless and accurate analysis.
Information Collection
After these steps you should also collect information about market while analyzing different sites and marketplaces. This collection of data will help you understand behaviors and demands of your targeted audience. For better analysis there are Competitive Pricing tools available in the market.
Wants to know more about Automated Competitive Price Monitoring tool, check out our [[Competitive Price Tracking]] tool.
Evaluation Analytic & Reporting
Collection of raw data is not enough, after collecting the data it is only useful when you analyze that that and make implement them on the basis of that data makes the process useful. Evaluation of these data can be hectic sometimes if done manually, but there are many platforms who provides services for collection and analysis of data.
For more information, check out our [[Main Page]]
Stock Availability
After analysis, before your decide the final price of your product you should also consider the stock availability of the respective product. As most retail shops makes sures to not promote products in lower prices if they don't have enough stocks, as it not only wastes the time of customer it can also stain your brand reputation.
Let understand this scenario better with the help of an example. Lets suppose you are dealing with a shirt which are available in stock few pieces only, then if you promotes that shirt in lower prices and an eventually after a while when customers will visit your site to find the shirt stocked out, the promotion price becomes irrelevant as they can't get the product in that prices.
Getting products out of stock happens with business in times but if it happens on regular basis and you can't restock things on time, then it can be proved a lethal disadvantage for your brand value and reputation in the market.
Executions
After considering all the factors, then you should feed all these data of your automated price intelligence tool if you have one, or you can provide it to your price analyst as they will analyze the data and provide you the future forecast regarding your products and services.
Features to Look for Price Intelligence Solutions
While fetching for Price Intelligence tool, there are countless options around the global, but you can't decide which one to choose? Well no worries, judge your all the tools on the following parameters so that you can choose the right tool which helps you to boost your business.
Real-time Data Updates
The right analysis tool will provide real-time update to you as an hour can be too late for you. With this fast changing market, real-time data updates are so essential that Amazon, the leading e-commerce retailer updates their data in every 10 seconds so how do you think your data updation once in while will work. Always try to choose the price intelligence tool whose data update time is lower than an hour or have custom update time available.
Smart Product Matching
Matching product on the basis on product code and description became old, everyone can do that, but the accuracy in product matching comes when you matching tool is smart enough to compare images of the products too for accurate and more understandable match. There are product matching tool which does not provide services of image-recognition in product match, which can proved to be an inconsistency as well as inaccuracy of data. So make sure your product automatch tool is smart enough to compete in the market.
Stock & Availability Tracker
Not altering your prices on the basis of your stock availability is like leaving money in the table and praying no one takes it. If one of you product sets a trend or slipping from your inventory like a hot knife on a butter, your price intelligence tool should modify your according to the inventory changes to get the most profit during peak times while lowering prices when you have lot of stock to encourage purchasing or during low demand. If the price intelligence tool doesn't changes alter according to you stock then it is not saving your efforts like it promised, which can sometime get hectic and hard to manage.
Visual Dashboards
Having visuals of analysis is a fast and effective way of understand data and making decision on its basis. The platforms who are hesitant in providing visual analysis of the data are not knee bend to save your time and efforts and it can lead to another big work of analyzing and studying whole data in a documented for, or converting them into visual in another platforms.
Custom Alters
Having real time data is one thing and knowing about the huge changes or the trend shift in the market is another, there are possibilities that your price intelligent tool collects data on real time, but if it does notify you about the important changes in the market, you might lose a great opportunity of beating you current competitor. So the platform which are providing real-time and custom alters should be more preferable than the platform which don't
Integration with ERP, CRM, or PIM System
With work culture shifting from paper work to databases, because of a lot benefits it is also crucial that the price intelligence tool you prefer can be easily integrated to your ERP, CRM or PIM System for better understanding of your organization and handling more of it task than making it a job for another person.
If you are searching for a price intelligence tool which are providing above services and many more, visit our website and get a part of our growing journey.
Future of Price Intelligence
Before relying on something, everyone wanted to know its reliability and durability. Durability in the sense that for how long will this technology will be used or does you need to find its alternative in near future? Well there is no worry about it, we brought you the future scope of Price Intelligence tool.
AI and Machine Learning
While there are alot of Artificial Intelligence used by the price intelligence tools, there is still alot of thing which can be improved by adopting more AI and machine learning. It can improve the quality of the services these tools can provide, for example better matching and analysis, smarter insight and dynamic rules.
Omnichannel Tracking
In future we are trying to make tracking for the competitor possible on every device and channel for better and more accurate market analysis and other than that it can be able to search all around the app of private web-store application so you can get list of competitors around the web, not just websites or platform. This can also make voice search and analysis possible so you can listen the report while doing other tasks.
Predictive Analytics
In future with fast changing technologies, future prediction and understanding trends will be more accurate and helpful making the business growing process seamless and worthwhile.
Competitive Intelligence Integration
Future of competitive price monitoring is very bright as we are planning to include more features than just price monitoring. We aim to provide you the best services possible due to which we will soon bundle the pricing information with delivery times, selling rates and customers review so you can see your competitors activity more clearly.
Conclusion
After looking towards every aspect of price intelligence we can say that in today's competitive market, doing everything by yourself is as impossible as getting successful just in a day. We all need to distribute our works to the respective experts for better result with minimal efforts. Price intelligence is a revolutionary tool in the invention of business and can help any business grow to its peak if used correctly.
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