All challenges retailers face every day come down to one: outperform your competitors and have as big a market share as possible. Price tracking practice is one of the tools that can help you. However, is it legal to monitor prices? What tools to use? How to use the data you get? Read further to know.

Price tracking: wise strategy or dirty game?

Taking a sneak peek at competitors for various data is common practice; however, a question remains – is it legal or not? In case of price monitoring, it’s not that you’re copying competitors – you are checking on a current market situation to adjust your prices and strategy. Moreover, dampening prices or lowering them below the minimum advertised price (MAP) is indeed against the rules, and you can’t know other retailers’ prices without monitoring them, so the practice is not only allowed but beneficial for all market players. 

However, you need to remember one thing – you don’t track prices just to lower or raise yours. The goal is to figure out trends in consumers’ behaviour and competitors’ strategy, to understand your strengths and weaknesses, and adjust prices so that they match the level and quality of services or goods you offer. 

Such an approach also helps you prevent pricing wars. That’s a situation when a company lowers prices in order to gain more profit, and its competitors respond with the same step. If companies continue to do that, it turns into a harmful event, as profits go down, and when customers are used to low prices, it’s hard to raise them back to normal. The wise use of pricing data – not just blind adjustments to match someone’s level – helps stabilize the market and ensure a stable margin. 

How to track prices: tools to rely on

Price tracking is an automated process, and with the introduction of AI, it has become even more informative. However, you need to consider some important factors.

• Target price monitoring tool

There are a lot of available options – they differ in features and prices. The most well-known are Price2Spy and Intelligence Node; however, choose not the most popular one, but the one that matches your use case. There is also no real reason to overpay for features you won’t use. Such instruments automate the entire process, getting pricing data for you. 

• Web scraping tools and APIs 

Another option is to use general-purpose web scraping solutions. There are no-code or low-code options for non-tech pros. Such tools may be helpful as they can extract various types of data – stock availability, VAT, shipping costs, promotional strategies, and special limited offers to gain a complete view of competitors’ position. Here, we have a list of the best no-coding scraping tools. 

• Create a custom app

One more option is to craft a tool; however, you will need a tech team to write and maintain it, as well as time and money. On the other hand, such a decision provides you with endless opportunities to customize a solution according to your needs, so if your use case is unique, it may be worth it. Libraries such as Scrapy can help you. 

• Product matching tools 

Getting pricing data is one; you then have to match prices of the same goods. There are AI-powered systems that map competitors’ products against your catalog, considering even differences in naming, colors, packaging, etc., to ensure reliable and accurate comparison. 

• Additional tools 

In a nutshell, price monitoring is a scraping of financial data. With scraping, you always have to be careful not to violate platforms’ terms of service. The other problem is to ensure a smooth connection across regions and to produce normal traffic patterns in order to align with monitoring systems implemented by websites. Tools like proxies can help you ensure access from all over the world and stay in line with policy guidelines. Also, they allow distribution of traffic across numerous IPs, so you can scrape a lot of sources simultaneously, saving time. 

There are some more tips that go for all the categories. Opt for tools with dynamic dashboards – real-mode visualization of price fluctuations will save you time and help you get a sense of fast-changing data. Also, leveraging alerting systems that will notify you about any changes in price or availability is a good idea. To get a full picture of competitors’ strategy, track not only prices, but promotions and channels of advertising as well. 

Using price data: what to do and what to avoid? 

When you see that a competitor offers the same good 2x cheaper or more expensive, there might be an urge to change your price tags immediately. Such rush decisions may seem beneficial at first, but they are usually harmful in the long run. To avoid it, there are some rules to stick to.

Analyse your assortment and define products that customers often compare with other offers, and where price is a factor. Also find out goods that serve as traffic drivers and where visibility is more important than margin per piece. Decide on products where you compete for value, not price. Then, for each category, set a minimum margin level. This way, you avoid reacting to provocations and changing prices thoughtlessly. If a pricing war is about to break out between your competitors, instead of lowering prices below a reasonable minimum, focus on improving content so it conveys the quality you offer, add services, offer alternatives, or more shipping options, etc.

Another tip is to broaden your offers. When two products look the same, customers focus on prices and choose a cheaper option. Your task is to differentiate and avoid looking like competitors. If the goods you offer are clearly identical, use other ways – quality content that answers all the questions about goods, such as their ingredient lists, method of use, etc.; provide clear warranties, real reviews, and troubleshooting tips. When a customer sees that you offer not only a product, but a service, you are responsible for what you sell, and in case of possible hurdles, you’re here to help solve them; price becomes secondary. 

To sum up 

Price tracking may sound difficult; however, it can provide you with valuable insights and help you stay competitive, so it’s worth the trouble. Especially as there are now a lot of available tools and even AI-powered systems that simplify the process in no time. On its side, DataImpulse can help you with reliable, GDPR-compliant proxies that help you ensure stable access and preserve your privacy – starting from $0.7/GB for residential IPs. Hit the “Try now” button to start – or our support team is ready to assist if you have any questions.