A Price Comparison Data Enhancement Methodology

What is Price Comparison and what does it means?

In recent years we are witnessing the multiplication and development of extremely specific digital tools in the Price Comparison sphere. Their birth and refinement are closely linked to the evolution of the online sales landscape.

Every online seller, in fact, needs to understand how the market in which it operates moves by monitoring its dynamics and variations.

Especially today, in an increasingly crowded, competitive and dynamic web landscape, those who sell online are increasingly acquiring the awareness that their competitiveness is heavily affected by the Price factor.

Although the factors that determine the competitiveness of an online seller are many and varied (such as reputation, visibility, service, content, efficiency and reliability of the platform – just to name the main ones), Price is a crucial element in the online user's purchase decision process. In fact, we know that today an online buyer compares prices from 4 sites on average before deciding where to proceed with his purchase.

For a retailer this means monitoring and controlling how their competitors are acting. For a Brand with an online sales network, this translates into monitoring and controlling how its retailers are behaving with its products.

In both scenarios, the understanding of market dynamics and variations constitute an essential resource for taking strategic choices with a view to maintaining or increasing competitiveness and - in general - optimizing their online business.

A Price Comparison tool, often called also Price Intelligence, Price Optimization or Price Monitoring tool - is usually a software in Saas capable of detecting daily (or even several times a day) and automatically the main e-commerce metrics on a selection of online stores, in relation to a specific panel of SKUs:

charged prices
deviation from a certain price threshold
discounts
presence or absence of stock

Thanks to this kind of software, companies can therefore conduct monitoring activities of their target market which would otherwise be extremely expensive, both in terms of time and resources.

What are the advantages of using a price comparison software?

Price Comparison softwares are highly requested solutions by online retailers because they can support them in the competitive differentiation towards other sellers, as well as for the development of a dynamic pricing strategy. But also Brands, in recent years, are starting to use them more and more often, driven by increasingly pressing needs:

monitor the prices charged by online players on Brand products compared to the suggested sale price (in one or more countries, through one or more currencies, whether they are official e-retailers or not, direct sites or even marketplaces)
monitor the availability of Brand products on their online distribution channels
monitor the competition of competing brands on their online sale network
maximize their direct online sales (in presence of an owned eCommerce)
protect the Brand Perception

Our approach

At S’nce Group, we are aware that Price Monitoring tools are a valuable resource for the Brand's sales departments, from which they are mainly used to monitor their online distributors.

However, we sensed how the data provided by these kinds of tools - as they are structured and returned - are not sufficiently processed to fully express their potential and to be exploited to the maximum in a strategic perspective on the entire online sales Brand ecosystem.

Guided by the awareness that today Big Data is an essential resource for digital business, we have conducted a specific R&D project to develop a specific methodology capable of providing Brands with advanced strategic evidence for optimizing their online business, even in presence of an owned direct sale channel such as a Brand e-Commerce.

Ours, conducted by our internal Business Intelligence unit, is a Data Enhancement Methodology applied to Price Comparison sphere: a specific project of pricing data analysis, management, and integration.

Our Pricing Data Enhancement methodology

Our methodology allows us to provide Brands with strategic advice starting from the data provided by the Price Comparison platform and it is structured on different processing levels:

aggregation and processing of Price Comparison data
integration with relevant third party data in the digital landscape of the Brand
contextualization of the evidence of the Price Comparison tool
the processing of evolved periodic and strategic evidence, potentially extremely granular

Therefore, starting from the analysis of online retailers' pricing and stock dynamics, and then integrating them both with key brand metrics and with external digital metrics, we develop strategic insights functional to targeted interventions on various strategic areas of the Business & Digital Strategy for optimizing and maximizing Brand overall online sales.

Why choose a Price Comparison strategic advice

Our analytical methodology applied to Price Comparison was conceived and developed starting from the firm desire to help Brands to fully understand the interrelationships that intervene in online sales processes to act in a targeted and effective manner where necessary.

Our strategic consultancy consists of the monitoring, trend, and interpretation of different KPIs families related to the Brand online sales eco-system, which therefore includes not only its e-retailers, but also its own e-commerce channel (obviously, only if present).

Thanks to our strategic advice, therefore, Brands are enabled to:

punctually understand the behavior dynamics of online e-retailers in relation to Brand SKUs prices, stock availability, offers, price violations at the most granular level
evaluate and optimize the management of distribution relationships
adjust their owned e-commerce Digital Strategy in relation to the behavior of e-retailers overtime
optimize their positioning strategy on e-retailers compared to competing players