The DataWeave Blog

Category: Pricing

  • Own Your Product Matches: Gain The Power of Accuracy and Control at Your Fingertips

    Own Your Product Matches: Gain The Power of Accuracy and Control at Your Fingertips

    AI-powered product matching is the backbone of competitive pricing intelligence. Accurate matches help you compare prices correctly, identify meaningful assortment gaps, and optimize product content. Inaccurate matches distort every one of these insights. In some categories, a single mismatch can cause millions of dollars of lost revenue.

    Retailers and brands know this problem well. Product catalogs are vast. Competitor assortments shift daily. Titles are inconsistent. Product codes are missing. Images vary by region or packaging. Basically, context matters, and AI alone often misses that context.

    This is why a human-in-the-loop approach is essential. It allows product matches to be verified consistently, at scale, and with the context that only people can provide. Many retailers have also told us they want to take this a step further. They want the ability to control and define their own product matches.

    Sometimes that is because they need to fix inevitable errors quickly. Other times, it is because their teams have deeper category knowledge and can make the right judgment calls when AI falls short.

    To make that possible, DataWeave introduced User-Led Match Management. It combines the scale of AI with the judgment of experts within retail organizations. The platform does not just suggest matches. It gives your teams the tools to approve, reject, or refine them. This ensures your competitive intelligence reflects both machine precision and your unique business logic.

    Why AI Matching Alone Falls Short

    AI has changed the speed and scale of product matching. Algorithms can process millions of SKUs quickly. They can detect similarities in text, images, and metadata. But in retail, the stakes are too high to rely on AI alone.

    Here is where AI sometimes falls short:

    • Category complexity: Matching rules that work in electronics may fail in fashion or grocery. An electronics SKU may depend on a model number. A fashion SKU may depend on seasonality. A grocery SKU may depend on pack size or whether it is a private label.
    Product descriptions differ from region to region
    Product pack sizes may be listed differently across marketplaces, regions
    • Data inconsistency: Titles vary. Images differ across regions. These gaps, when large, trip up algorithms.
    • Business context: Should a premium product ever be compared against a budget line? Should seasonal products match year-round items? AI may not know these boundaries.
    • Scale vs. accuracy: Automated systems optimize for coverage. That speed often limits accuracy for a small set of SKUs. Even a 1% error rate across millions of SKUs creates thousands of bad comparisons.

    AI is critical for scale. But accuracy requires human input. DataWeave’s human-in-the-loop framework addresses this by allowing expert reviewers to validate and improve AI outputs. Our user-led match management takes this further by putting control directly into the hands of your business teams.

    What DataWeave’s User-Led Match Management Delivers

    With User-Led Match Management, your team is not a passive reviewer. They become active participants in shaping the accuracy of your competitive intelligence.

    DataWeave's User Led Match Management lets you own your product matches

    Your teams can:

    • Approve, reject, or flag AI-suggested matches. Every suggestion comes with full visibility into why it was made. Your team can validate matches quickly, fix errors, and improve the dataset in real time.
    Approve or reject product matches based on your criteria and business goals
    • Define what “similar” means for your business. A retailer may want to compare multipacks against single packs. A brand may only care about comparing premium products to other premium products. With User-Led Match Management, your team sets tolerance levels that match your strategy.
    • Manually add or refine matches. When AI misses edge cases, your team can add them. This ensures coverage is complete and reflects the true competitive landscape.

    This approach creates a loop where AI, complemented by DataWeave’s human-in-the-loop framework does the heavy lifting, and your teams can fine-tune the results. The outcome is both scale and accuracy.

    Key Features

    DataWeave designed User-Led Match Management to be simple, intuitive, and scalable:

    • Expert-Led Decision Making forms the heart of the system. Rather than trusting AI suggestions blindly, teams gain full visibility into matching logic and can leverage their contextual knowledge of products, categories, and retailers. When the system suggests matching a premium product against a basic alternative, human experts can reject the match and flag it for different criteria. This expertise is particularly valuable for new product launches, seasonal items, or products with complex positioning strategies.
    You can verify matches based on specific attributes like size, type, and more
    • Business Logic Integration: Teams can define matching parameters that reflect their specific strategic needs. A premium brand might establish rules that prevent matches against budget alternatives, while a value retailer might specifically seek those comparisons. Category managers can create different matching criteria for different product lines, ensuring that seasonal items, limited editions, and promotional products are handled appropriately.
    Ensure that your products are matched according to business goals for accurate competitive intelligence
    • Transparent Decision Making: Every match decision creates an audit trail capturing who made the decision, when it occurred, and the reasoning behind it. This transparency is crucial for enterprise environments where pricing decisions need to be defensible and strategies need to be consistent across teams and time periods.
    Review and audit actions to ensure transsparency
    • Scalable Validation: User-Led systems provide bulk operations for efficiency while maintaining oversight. Teams can upload thousands of matches for validation, use filtered views to focus on high-priority items, and leverage automated alerts for matches that fall outside established tolerance levels.
    Review product matches at scale across categories, subcategories.

    Each of these features reduces the friction between AI outputs and business-ready insights.

    Technical Foundation

    The AI foundation behind User-Led Match Management is built for precision and scale.

    1. It uses multimodal AI that combines text, image, and metadata analysis to identify matches even when products are described or displayed differently across retailers.
    2. Domain heuristics apply retail-specific logic, recognizing that “Large” means something different in apparel than in beverages, and that seasonal items require unique treatment.
    3. Knowledge graphs link products across brands, categories, and regions to reveal true relationships even when surface attributes vary.
    4. Through continuous learning, every human correction improves future AI suggestions, making the system smarter and more accurate over time.

    For more information, download our whitepaper here!

    Why This Matters

    Pricing Intelligence

    With DataWeave, accurate and reliable product matching is the standard. Advanced algorithms and built-in quality checks deliver consistently high accuracy, reducing the risk of mismatched products and unreliable insights.

    In the few cases where a match needs review, User-Led Match Management gives your team the ability to validate it quickly and easily. You get full visibility and control, while DataWeave ensures the integrity of the overall matching framework.

    The outcome is true apples-to-apples price comparisons that protect margins, strengthen pricing strategies, and build trust in every decision.

    Assortment Analytics

    Gaps and overlaps only matter when matches are accurate. To understand your true competitive landscape, you need to eliminate false gaps and phantom overlaps that distort assortment insights.

    DataWeave’s advanced Match Management ensures precise product alignment across retailers, categories, and regions, giving you a clear view of your position in the market. At the same time, user-led oversight adds transparent validation, allowing your teams to confirm or refine matches based on their category knowledge.

    The result is a complete and trustworthy view of category coverage that reflects reality, not noise. It helps you identify real opportunities to expand assortments, close gaps, and respond quickly to market changes.

    Content Optimization

    Digital shelf audits only deliver value when the comparisons are accurate. DataWeave ensures that every product is benchmarked against its true competitors so that your insights reflect the real dynamics of your category. For example, a luxury serum is never compared to a basic moisturizer, and a premium electronic device is never matched with an entry-level model.

    With user-led control, your teams have transparent oversight of every match. They can review, validate, or adjust comparisons to make sure each audit aligns with your business standards. The result is a more reliable and actionable view of your digital shelf performance, helping you fine-tune content, optimize visibility, and strengthen conversion across channels.

    Trust and Accountability

    Leadership teams need complete confidence in the data they use to make decisions. User-Led Match Management delivers that confidence by combining the scale of AI with the assurance of human validation. Every match decision is transparent and traceable, giving teams clear visibility into how and why a product was matched.

    This approach builds trust across departments, from analysts to executives. It ensures that every pricing, assortment, and content decision is backed by data that is both accurate and accountable.

    Your Market, Your Rules, Your Insights

    Retailers and brands today need more than fast data. They need data they can trust, shape, and act on with confidence. User-Led Match Management gives them that control. It turns product matching from a static, automated process into a dynamic, collaborative workflow that adapts to how real teams operate.

    Category managers can fine-tune match rules instead of waiting on system updates. Pricing teams can validate critical SKUs in minutes, not days. Digital shelf teams can ensure their audits reflect real competitors, not algorithmic guesses. Executives gain visibility into decisions they can stand behind, supported by transparent data trails and measurable accuracy.

    In short, User-Led Match Management puts control back where it belongs – in your hands. It helps every team move faster, compete smarter, and make decisions powered by data they can truly believe in.

    Reach out to us to learn more!

  • Prime Day 2025: Shadow of Rising Prices Over Record Sales

    Prime Day 2025: Shadow of Rising Prices Over Record Sales

    Amazon Prime Day 2025 generated a record-breaking $24.1 billion in US online sales during its extended four-day run (July 8–11, 2025). While the expanded format helped broaden participation, it also diluted the urgency and daily peaks that typically define Prime Day.

    Beneath this record-setting performance lies a more complex reality. Persistent inflation, shifting consumer behavior, and rising pricing pressures created a retail environment very different from previous years, one where higher baseline prices often replaced the deep discounts shoppers expected.

    To understand these dynamics, DataWeave analyzed pricing and visibility trends across 11,495 products using our proprietary AI platform. The study focused on four major categories – Consumer Electronics, Apparel, Home & Furniture, and Health & Beauty – comparing identical SKUs from Prime Day 2024 and 2025, and tracking changes in both organic and sponsored share of search for leading brands.

    The results reveal clear year-over-year price increases: Apparel led with a 9.5% rise, followed by Health & Beauty (7.9%), Consumer Electronics (5.1%), and Home & Furniture (3.9%). In total, 47% of tracked products saw higher prices, indicating that this year’s record sales were achieved in an environment of elevated base pricing rather than deeper discounts.

    Category-wise year-on-year price surge 2024 Vs. 2025_Amazon Prime Day

    Multiple converging forces shaped the retail landscape leading into Prime Day 2025, pushing baseline prices higher even before promotions began.

    • Supply Chain Pressures: Ongoing disruptions and elevated shipping and production costs continue to shape the cost structure across categories.
    • Trade Policy Factors: Recent tariff measures and trade regulations may be contributing to upward pricing trends in certain categories, particularly those with high import dependence such as electronics and home goods.
    • Labor and Operating Costs: Rising wages, transportation expenses, and general operating overhead are placing additional pressure on retailer margins and influencing pricing decisions.
    • Currency Fluctuations: Shifts in exchange rates continue to add variability to the cost of imported goods, especially in globally sourced categories like electronics and apparel.

    These combined pressures created a pricing environment where brands had less room for deep discounting, shaping not just how products were priced, but also how aggressively they were promoted.

    To better understand the impact, we compared Prime Day 2025 prices to those from Prime Day 2024 for the same SKUs across major categories. This year-over-year view highlights how elevated baseline prices, driven by the factors outlined above, shaped the shopping experience and promotional strategies.

    Consumer Electronics

    • JBL prices increased 24% year-over-year, the highest among major electronics brands.
    • Amazon’s own brand saw prices increase by 22%.
    • Beats saw a significant 9% increase, while Sony and Samsung both experienced 8% price increases. Apple prices went up by 6%, and Google saw a 7% increase.
    • Meanwhile, other established brands like LG and Motorola maintained minimal increases at 1%, Lenovo at 2%, Soundcore at 3%, and Bose and Hisense both at 5%.
    Consumer Electronics Price Change_Share of Search_Prime Day 2025

    Apple dominated visibility gains, jumping to 17.2% share of search during Prime Day with a 10.7% growth, likely driven by promotional focus on premium devices. Soundcore also saw significant gains of 10.3%, reaching 15.8% share of search.

    LG and Amazon Basics both achieved strong 5.1% growth. Hisense gained 4.7% share with 5% price increases. Samsung and Amazon maintained strong positions with modest gains of 1.9% and 1.3% respectively.

    However, several brands lost ground, with Sony declining most significantly by 1.8% share despite its strong market position, followed by Google (-0.5%) and Motorola (-0.4%).

    Apparel

    • Party Pants showed the highest price increases at 18% year-over-year, followed by casual wear brand Dokotoo at 13%.
    • Athleisure brand CRZ Yoga saw prices increasing by 11%, while Under Armour saw prices rise by 10%.
    • While Reebok experienced a significant 12% increase, Adidas saw 5% price increase.
    • Meanwhile, innerwear brands like Hanes and Cupshe saw minimal price increases at 1%, while Coofandy also saw minimal increases of 1%.
    • Amazon’s own Amazon Essentials maintained minimal price increases of 2%, and Jockey saw modest increases of 4%.
    Apparel Price Change_Share of Search_Prime Day 2025

    T-shirt brand Gildan led share of search gains with 4.0% growth along with a 5% price increase. Party Pants achieved 3.3% growth with 18% price increases, while CRZ Yoga gained 2.8% share and 11% price increases.

    Amazon Essentials and Mens’ apparel brand Coofandy both improved share by 2.1%, with Amazon Essentials keeping price increases to just 2% and Coofandy at 1%. Under Armour gained 2.3% share with 10% price increase.

    However, several brands lost ground, with Hanes declining significantly by 4.4% while keeping price increases to just 1%, followed by Cupshe (-1.4%) and Blooming Jelly (-0.7%).

    Home & Furniture

    • Mattress brand Best Price Mattress increased prices 23% year-over-year, the highest in the category.
    • Amazon Basics showed 12% price increases, demonstrating strategic private label pricing.
    • Home Improvement and Appliances brand Black+Decker saw a pricing increase of 11%.
    • Better Homes saw an 8% increase, while most other brands saw price increases between 4-7%.
    Home & Furniture Price Change_Share of Search_Prime Day 2025

    Appliance brand Acekool led visibility gains with 3.7% growth along with a 5% price increase. Amazon Basics improved significantly with a 3.6% share growth alongside its 12% price increases. Better Homes achieved 3.1% gains with 8% price increases.

    Ironck gained 2.6% share with 7% price increases, and furniture brand Furinno improved by 1.5% with 5% price increases. However, several brands lost ground, with Samsonite declining most significantly by 4.4%, Best Price Mattress lost 2.1% share with its massive 23% price increase, and Allewie declined by 1.7% with 4% price increases.

    Home goods face elevated pressure from expanded steel and aluminium tariffs increased to 50%.

    Health & Beauty

    • Minimalist saw prices increase 25% year-over-year, the highest in the category, followed by Tresemme at 20% and Oral-B at 17%.
    • Neutrogena increased pricing by 14%, while Sun Bum rose 13% and Viking Revolution 12%.
    • Nyx Professional Makeup saw price increases of 10%, Dove and L’Oréal Paris both at 8%, and Maybelline at 7%.
    • Value-positioned brands saw modest price increases, with Philips Sonicare (6%), OGX and Banana Boat (both 5%), e.l.f. (4%), and Garnier (3%).
    • Notably, Cetaphil, Colgate, and Sensodyne all kept increases to just 1%.
    Health & Beauty Price Change_Share of Search_Prime Day 2025

    Dove led visibility gains with 9.3% growth along with 8% price increases. Minimalist achieved remarkable 8.1% growth even with the category’s highest 25% price increases, and Maybelline gained 4.9% share with 7% price increases.

    Cetaphil improved by 4.8% with minimal 1% price increases, while e.l.f. gained 4.1% share with 4% price increases. However, several established brands lost share, with Oral-B declining most significantly by 9.3% along with 17% price increases, followed by OGX (-7.9%) with 5% price increases, Viking Revolution (-6.5%) with 12% increases, and Philips Sonicare (-5.5%) with 6% price increases.

    In Conclusion

    Prime Day 2025 underscores the shifting realities of retail, where persistent pricing pressures, evolving consumer behavior, and complex market forces are redefining how promotions are planned and executed. In this environment, success hinges on having the right intelligence at the right time, empowering brands to target promotions strategically, protect margins, and maintain visibility in a crowded marketplace.

    As competition intensifies, the ability to anticipate trends and respond with precision will separate market leaders from the rest. At DataWeave, we equip retailers and brands with the insights needed to navigate these changes and make data-backed decisions that drive sustainable growth.

    Stay connected to our blog for ongoing analysis of pricing, promotion, and visibility trends or reach out to us today to learn more.

  • Turning Headwinds Into Wins: How Brands Can Navigate Price, Share, and Visibility Amid Tariff Disruption

    Turning Headwinds Into Wins: How Brands Can Navigate Price, Share, and Visibility Amid Tariff Disruption

    Disruption Is Now the Baseline

    Tariffs can spike landed costs overnight, regulations rewrite labelling rules, and competitors slash prices before your team finishes its daily stand-up. And yet, some consumer brands thrive.

    The winning brands see changes early, decide quickly, and execute flawlessly across the digital shelf. This post blends three decades of pricing and merchandising expertise with timely digital shelf insights from DataWeave, offering a clear path forward for brands navigating today’s volatile retail environment.

    From Cost Shock to Chronic Uncertainty

    Tariffs are no longer just one-off headlines; they’ve become an unpredictable, ongoing variable in the global marketplace. The true challenge isn’t always the duty rate itself, but the constant whiplash of not knowing if, when, or how much that duty will change. This pervasive uncertainty is having a tangible impact:

    • Market Uncertainty: Tariff talk alone disrupts planning and fuels market instability.
    • Operational cost inflation: Shifting trade rules raise expenses across sourcing, freight, and distribution.
    • Compromised SKU-level Margin: The profitability of individual products is under constant threat.
    • Shrinkflation: Brands shrink product quantities to mask rising costs, risking consumer trust.

    Unpredictable Competitive Response: Delaying price moves while watching competitors can erode margins as much as tariffs.

    To stay ahead, pricing decisions must be stress-tested against multiple tariff scenarios and aligned with likely competitor reactions. Timing matters as much as accuracy, move too soon or too late, and margins suffer either way.

    The Tariff Math No One Can Afford to Get Wrong

    When it comes to tariff disruption, the difference between profit and loss often hinges on a precise understanding of a three-step process. Get any part of this chain wrong, and the financial ripple effect can undermine pricing and promotions. The duty you pay, therefore, is the direct result of the following three critical steps:

    Step 1: Harmonized System (HS) Code

    • What it is: A six- to ten-digit classifier that drills down to product sub-types.
    • Why it matters: A single digit change can shift an item into a higher-tariff bracket.

    Step 2: Country of Origin

    • What it is: The nation in which the imported item was made.
    • Why it matters: Mis-tagging the origin can lead to mis-pricing and inaccurate margin calculations.

    Step 3: Trade-Agreement Overlay

    • What it is: Differentiation between the World Trade Organization (WTO) baseline tariffs and special trade agreements (e.g., USMCAUnited States-Mexico-Canada Agreement).
    • Why it matters: The same HS code can result in significantly different duties, up to a 10% swing, depending on the originating country (see the example below).

    This isn’t just about paying the correct duty; it’s about safeguarding your bottom line in a global marketplace where every digit and every designation carries substantial weight.

    The wrong origin, the wrong rule, the wrong margin.

    Hard Numbers: Where Prices Are Already Climbing

    DataWeave’s latest digital shelf analysis shows import-driven price inflation diverging sharply by source country.

    The intricate dance of HS codes, country of origin, and trade agreements directly translates into the prices consumers see. And the data doesn’t lie. Below, we delve into the hard numbers: where prices are already climbing, as illuminated by DataWeave’s latest digital shelf monitoring, showing significant import-driven price inflation by source country.

    • China: Products sourced from China are up 5%. This is largely attributable to the numerous tariffs currently imposed on Chinese goods.
    • Mexico: Prices for products from Mexico have risen by 3%.
    • United States: Interestingly, even U.S.-sourced products show a 3% increase.
    tariff price increases

    This rise in U.S. product prices might seem counterintuitive if tariffs are solely focused on imports. However, the reality lies in the global supply chain for many products.

    Consider guacamole as an example: While the final product might be “Made in the USA,” its components often come from various international sources. Avocados might be imported from Mexico, lime juice from Central America, and seasonings from India or China. Even packaging could originate in Asia. Each of these imported components can be subject to tariffs. Therefore, even if an item is assembled in the U.S., the tariffs on its constituent parts contribute to an overall price increase, explaining the rising rates for U.S.-sourced goods.

    Action step: Map tariff exposure at both finished-goods and component-level to avoid “Made in USA” blind spots.

    Timing Is a Competitive Weapon

    With duty tables and competitor reactions changing fast, the question is: move first or follow? Early movers recoup cost fastest but risk overshooting if tariffs ease; laggards may enjoy a brief price advantage but suffer sudden margin compression.

    The Strategic Dilemma

    The table below illustrates this strategic choice and its potential outcomes:

    Shrinkflation: Margin Patch or Trust Erosion?

    Beyond direct price adjustments, many brands are turning to shrinkflation to manage tariff-driven cost pressure, shaving net weight instead of hiking prices. DataWeave’s analysis reveals an average package reduction of 5 – 6%, with extreme cases reaching 15 – 25%, sometimes even coupled with a shelf-price increase.

    While this can cushion immediate margin, it comes at a significant cost: brand credibility. Savvy shoppers quickly spot these changes, sharing “before-and-after” photos online and fueling consumer frustration. What begins as a margin patch can rapidly erode trust and damage long-term loyalty.

    Ultimately, navigating this volatile environment requires dynamic intelligence and a holistic pricing strategy that balances profitability with market share and, crucially, consumer trust.

    Price Hikes May be Inevitable, But You Can Still Run Your Digital Shelf

    Tariff‑driven cost pressure can force list‑price increases, but it does not dictate how well your products show up, sell through, or satisfy shoppers online. Those outcomes still hinge on five levers that live entirely inside your control. Master them and you cushion margin hits while protecting (or even expanding) share.

    The Five Levers of Digital‑Shelf Control

    • Inventory Depth – Maintain online in‑stock rates above 95 percent for high‑velocity SKUs and flag substitute logic when unavoidable out‑of‑stocks occur.
    • Content Quality & Accuracy – Keep titles keyword‑rich, imagery crisp, and attributes complete so search filters never bury you.
    • Ratings & Reviews Cadence – Proactively request fresh reviews to earn retailer search boosts and reassure value‑conscious shoppers.
    • Retail‑Media Precision – Bid where pages are healthy and in‑stock; pause spend on broken listings that leak conversion and ROAS.
    • Fulfillment Excellence – Monitor pick‑pack accuracy, on‑time delivery, and substitution rates; each one influences retailer algorithmic visibility.

    Content Hygiene Keeps You Visible, Compliant, and Conversion-Ready

    Missing or incorrect product attributes (e.g., “gluten-free,” “caffeine content”) can swiftly jeopardize both regulatory compliance and your product’s fundamental search visibility. Simply put, if it’s not labeled right, it won’t be found.

    This impact plays out in two crucial areas:

    1. Retailer Search Visibility: Filter logic on major e-commerce platforms like Target.com, Walmart.com, and Instacart is increasingly driven by precise attribute tags (e.g., “gluten-free,” “BPA-free,” “0g added sugar”). Fail to provide or correctly format these claims, and your product will simply never appear when shoppers apply these critical search filters. You become invisible to a motivated audience.
    2. Regulatory Compliance: Global regulatory bodies, including the U.S. FDA and EU authorities, now treat online product detail pages as officially regulated labeling space. This means that a single missing allergen statement or an inaccurate nutritional claim can trigger severe consequences, from product takedowns and hefty fines to a devastating “straight-to-zero” share of search. Non-compliance isn’t just a legal risk; it’s a direct threat to your market presence (see example below).

    The Hygiene Playbook: Audit → Score → Fix → Grow

    Your Product Detail Pages (PDPs) are your digital storefronts, and they need to be impeccable. Modern content-intelligence tools are like vigilant auditors, constantly scanning, structuring, and scoring every PDP across your retail network.

    Tools like DataWeave do the heavy lifting by:

    • Surfacing critical gaps: They’ll pinpoint issues like blurry images, inaccurate titles, or missing nutrition information.
    • Optimizing for search: They ensure your product attributes align with live search filters, turning claims into clicks.
    • Flagging compliance risks: You’ll know about potential issues before regulators or retail partners ever do.
    • Quantifying your impact: Get a clear Content Quality Score that your teams can own and improve, week after week.

    When you execute this well, it’s not just about tidying up; it’s a powerful growth engine. This proactive approach fuels every step of the digital customer journey – from getting found, to winning the click, converting the cart, and ultimately, capturing reviews that boost your search rankings.

    A Case Study: Bush’s Beans Converts Visibility into Revenue

    Before Bush’s Beans achieved rapid success with their “audit → scorecard → rapid-fix” approach, they confronted a significant hurdle. Here’s how they overcame it to drive impressive revenue growth.

    The Challenge

    Bush’s Beans saw its e-commerce contribution stall at just 1.5 percent while competition in canned goods intensified. A quick audit revealed three root causes:

    1. Dipping online sales that signalled slipping visibility and conversion.
    2. Fragmented product content across major retailer sites as images, titles, and claims were inconsistent or missing altogether.
    3. Heavier category competition  making it harder to hold first-page search positions.

    The Fix

    The brand adopted DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics to create a single source of truth for every PDP. A lean internal team then:

    • Ran content audits across priority retailers to surface incomplete or non-compliant attributes.
    • Prioritized quick wins focusing on high-velocity SKUs where simple edits (e.g., adding pack-size keywords or allergy statements) would unlock search filters.
    • Tracked progress weekly using an automated scorecard to keep everyone focused on the next set of fixes.

    The Win

    Twelve months later the numbers told the story:

    Bush’s Beans transformed their product data into a strategic asset, significantly improving online visibility, safeguarding brand reputation, and driving sustained revenue growth. Accurate and complete product pages ensured compliance and boosted search rankings, directly increasing sales. While you can’t control external factors like tariffs, you can control the quality and compliance of your product pages and that control directly translates margin pressure into market share gains.

    Unified Insight: Turning Signals into Sustained Advantage

    Imagine one living dashboard where every digital shelf signal like timely price moves, share-of-search shifts, retail media spend, on-shelf availability gaps, compliance flags, MAP breaches, plus content and review health flows together. With that single lens, the “whose numbers are right?” debate disappears and cross-functional teams can act in minutes rather than days.

    A consolidated feed lets you:

    • Build market awareness: Spot competitor price changes as they happen, understand who owns first-page search, and measure the true lift of retail media campaigns.
    • Mitigate emerging risks: Surface impending out-of-stocks before rank erodes, catch claim or label errors ahead of audits, and receive instant alerts when a seller breaks MAP.
    • Activate growth levers: Prioritize content edits that open search filters and use ratings and reviews trends to fine-tune messaging and assortment.

    Brands that weave these signals into one workflow move faster than the disruption. That’s the connective tissue highlighted in our recent post on pairing Digital Shelf Analytics with Digital Shelf Impact Modelling: when granular shelf data sits beside strategic performance metrics, smarter decisions follow.

    A platform like DataWeave brings the pieces together quietly ingesting millions of price checks, availability reads, and PDP audits each day, then presenting only the next best actions. The payoff is simple: sharper market awareness, lower operational risk, and growth that compounds with every iteration.

    Keep Moving, Keep Winning

    Tariffs, evolving regulations, and agile competitors are no longer storms; they are the climate. Brands that pair a clear, shared insight stream with rapid execution turn volatility into durable advantage. Keep your data united, keep iterating on the five digital-shelf levers, and every new headwind becomes another step ahead.

  • Bridging the Gap: How Digital Shelf Impact Modeling Empowers Smarter Marketing Investments

    Bridging the Gap: How Digital Shelf Impact Modeling Empowers Smarter Marketing Investments

    Marketing analytics has evolved dramatically over the past decade, yet many brands still struggle to connect their marketing investments to real business outcomes. While traditional analytics platforms provide valuable historical insights, they often miss the critical external factors that drive consumer behavior in today’s fast-moving digital marketplace.

    The challenge isn’t just about measuring what happened. It’s about understanding why it happened and predicting what comes next. This is where Digital Shelf Impact Modeling becomes essential for smarter marketing investments.

    The Critical Data Gap In Marketing Analytics

    Traditional marketing analytics expose brands to considerable risk, especially in the CPG and retail space. The fundamental challenge lies in their reliance on lagging indicators for essential metrics like historical sales and ad spend. Data inputs may be months or quarters old before they’re used for strategic decision-making.

    That’s like making million-dollar marketing decisions while only looking in the rearview mirror when you need to watch the road ahead simultaneously.

    Most marketing analytics tools also typically overlook external market factors that can dramatically impact performance. In today’s retail landscape, where market conditions change rapidly, being blind to real-time competitive dynamics creates significant vulnerability. Key external factors that traditional analytics fail to capture include:

    • Competitor moves: Price changes, promotions, content updates
    • Consumer sentiment: Review trends, ratings, social engagement
    • Market dynamics: Stockouts, search ranking shifts, category growth

    In fact, opaque data integration and siloed insights remain substantial barriers to actionable intelligence from marketing analytics tools. Most critically, old school approaches often miss vital such variables influencing consumer behavior.

    These blind spots must be addressed to unlock the full value of marketing analytics investments and make truly informed marketing decisions.

    How Digital Shelf Impact Modeling Completes The Picture

    This is where Digital Shelf Impact Modeling plays a complementary role. Brands leveraging digital shelf analytics gain insights into actual market dynamics that traditional analytics alone cannot provide. However, brands using digital shelf insights in isolation often struggle to quantify how digital shelf improvements directly impact revenue. Answering questions like “Did better product content drive sales, or was it the influencer campaign?” remains challenging.

    Bridging these disconnected platforms requires intentional integration and a solution that can feed intensively cleaned and organized data into existing analytics frameworks. With the right data inputs, companies establish a powerful feedback loop for agile, data-driven decisions.

    A comprehensive DSA solution like DataWeave provides granular, actionable data on critical external variables such as:

    • Daily or weekly competitor pricing movements and promotional activity
    • Product content standardization and optimization across retailers
    • Review sentiment trends and potential reputation issues
    • Share of search/shelf performance relative to competitors

    When merged with established analytics capabilities, digital shelf impact modeling creates a complete picture that fills the blind spots holding marketing teams back from maximizing ROI.

    The Digital Shelf Advantage in Retail Media

    The popularity of retail media networks has further amplified the need for integrated digital shelf analytics approaches. These advertising platforms, operated by retailers, allow brands to display targeted ads to shoppers across digital properties based on first-party customer data and purchase insights.

    The retail media revolution has transformed e-commerce pages into sophisticated search engines for product discovery. This evolution has been so impactful that retail media ad revenue surged 16.3% in 2023, reaching $43.7B in the U.S., with continued growth projected.

    Major platforms like Walmart have expanded their retail media networks to capitalize on closed-loop attribution. Since retailers own the entire customer journey, they can track everything from ad impression to purchase on their e-commerce sites. This creates a significant advantage through accurate ROI measurement, unlike traditional advertising where attribution remains challenging.

    How Digital Shelf Impact Modeling Enhances Retail Media Optimization

    With retail media emerging as a top-performing sales channel, brands need sophisticated optimization strategies. Every brand wants to maximize visibility and performance across individual eCommerce sites, just as they optimize for Google or emerging AI platforms.

    Integrating digital shelf analytics into marketing mix models enables brands to:

    • Allocate ad spend more intelligently using real-time competitive insights
    • Identify timely campaign activation opportunities in response to market changes
    • Monitor organic ranking trends to strategically time paid promotional activities
    • Measure true campaign impact on digital shelf performance metrics

    For example, when a competitor launches an aggressive price drop in your category, Digital Shelf Impact Modeling provides immediate visibility into this change. This intelligence can trigger recommended campaign adjustments, such as increased sponsored ad bidding in affected categories. Traditional analytics alone cannot deliver this level of responsive optimization.

    How to Integrate Digital Shelf Impact Modeling: A 3-Step Framework

    Digital Shelf Impact Modeling for Marketing Investments

    Here’s how to integrate Digital Shelf Impact Modeling into your marketing strategy to start making better data-driven decisions for your brand.

    Step 1: Map Digital Shelf Variables to Analytics Inputs

    Begin by mapping specific digital shelf variables to your existing analytics inputs. Ensure that competitors are properly configured for monitoring in your digital shelf platform and that timely metrics like price changes and search ranking positions are linked with your marketing measurement systems.

    This integration is crucial because traditional analytics rely exclusively on historical data for forecasting. Adding real-time inputs delivers several benefits:

    • More accurate elasticity curves reflecting current market conditions
    • Better understanding of root causes behind demand shifts
    • Prevention of misattributing sales changes to your marketing activities when external factors may be responsible

    At DataWeave, our comprehensive coverage spans 500+ billion data points, 400,000 brands, and 1,500+ websites, ensuring brands never miss a competitor move and maintain complete visibility across the connected e-commerce landscape.

    Step 2: Feed High-Quality Digital Shelf Data into Analytics Platforms

    Next, integrate critical digital shelf metrics into your measurement framework:

    • Review and sentiment scores and trends
    • Content quality measurements
    • Competitive positioning data
    • Price gap analytics
    • Search ranking performance

    DataWeave employs a rigorous data accuracy validation process to ensure teams work with the cleanest, most reliable data possible. Our sophisticated processing pipeline removes anomalies and standardizes information across retailers, providing the consistent, high-integrity data foundation that robust marketing mix modeling demands.

    Step 3: Validate and Iterate

    A powerful Digital Shelf Impact Modeling solution helps measure whether your marketing efforts achieved their intended impact on the digital shelf. Use your digital shelf platform to assess your campaigns’ actual effect on key performance indicators:

    • Do promo-driven sales lifts correlate with improved search rankings?
    • How do content improvements impact conversion rates?
    • What is the relationship between paid media and organic visibility?

    DataWeave enables users to correlate metrics across the entire consumer journey, from awareness through post-purchase. Rather than focusing solely on short-term spikes, brands can measure lasting impacts on digital shelf health. This end-to-end visibility empowers teams to make increasingly informed decisions with each campaign cycle.

    Executive Decision Support in Uncertain Times

    It is no surprise to anyone that we are living through volatile times. Executives may be uncomfortable if they cannot provide their teams with strategic direction based on data or the tools they need to accelerate their workdays.

    By integrating Digital Shelf Impact Modeling with existing analytics, companies gain early warning signals about market shifts, enabling smarter resource allocation during budget constraints. This integration helps organizations move from tactical execution to strategic direction by:

    • Providing cross-channel impact analysis to understand the full marketing ecosystem
    • Equipping category managers with tactical optimization tools that support broader strategic objectives
    • Identifying competitive threats before they impact sales
    • Forecasting potential ROI impacts across various spending scenarios

    These capabilities help prevent wasted ad spend, missed opportunities, and lost sales.

    Future-Proofing Your Marketing Strategy with Digital Shelf Impact Modeling

    Several emerging trends highlight the growing importance of digital shelf-enhanced marketing analytics:

    • Trend 1: Navigating Economic Volatility – Brands can use Digital Shelf Impact Modeling to track how competitors adjust pricing in response to cost shocks like tariffs and inflation. This real-time intelligence directly improves demand forecasting accuracy.
    • Trend 2: AI-Powered Predictive Insights – Combining digital shelf trend detection (such as viral product reviews or sudden inventory fluctuations) with marketing performance metrics helps forecast demand spikes from otherwise unforeseen events.
    • Trend 3: Automated Optimization – Smart campaign activations and adjustments based on real-time digital shelf triggers drive efficiency. DataWeave’s vision includes an automated retail media intelligence layer that optimizes spend across channels based on integrated insights.

    DataWeave’s Unique Advantage

    At DataWeave, we’ve seen our digital shelf analytics customers significantly improve their organic search rankings because of better-sponsored ad campaigns. What makes DataWeave’s approach to Digital Shelf Impact Modeling uniquely powerful? Our platform is specifically designed to address the challenges of modern marketing measurement:

    • Superior data refresh rates ensure timely insights when they matter most
    • Unmatched marketplace coverage across more than 1,500 eCommerce sites globally
    • Advanced data normalization that standardizes metrics across disparate categories and retailers
    • API-first architecture enabling flexible data access and utilization

    Conclusion – From Hindsight to Foresight

    In the past, companies relied primarily on historical data for their marketing analytics. Today’s market leaders are incorporating Digital Shelf Impact Modeling to unlock superior insights, improve decision accuracy, and drive measurable ROI.

    DataWeave serves as the essential bridge between traditional analytics systems and real-time, comprehensive market intelligence. When digital shelf analytics and marketing measurement work together, brands gain a complete picture: traditional analytics show precisely what happened, while Digital Shelf Impact Modeling explains why it happened. Together, they reveal what’s coming next.

    Ready to transform your marketing analytics from hindsight to foresight? Contact us today to discover how our Digital Shelf Analytics can enhance your existing marketing investments and drive measurable business results.

  • Standard Reporting vs. Competitive Intelligence: What Retail Leaders Need to Know

    Standard Reporting vs. Competitive Intelligence: What Retail Leaders Need to Know

    Back in the day, pricing strategies were a lot easier. These days, not only do teams need to have robust standard price reporting workflows, but they also need to have the know-how and tools to gain and act on competitive intelligence. Retail leaders should prioritize automation and strategic thinking and ensure their teams have the tools, processes, and methodologies required to monitor the competition at scale and over the long term.

    Retail leaders who recognize the distinction between standard reporting and competitive intelligence are more likely to gain team buy-in, especially when developing pricing strategies that drive results. You can’t be everywhere at once, but you can optimize pricing strategies to stay ahead of the competition.

    This article has everything you need to know about the differences between standard reporting and competitive intelligence and how to use both to make your teams more effective than ever!

    Understanding the Distinction

    Standard price reporting is much like checking the weather to see if it’s stormy before grabbing a raincoat or sunhat. You need to do it to make essential, everyday choices, but it will not help you predict when the next storm is coming. Standard price reporting deals more with the short-term and immediate actions needed as opposed to long-term strategy.

    Don’t get us wrong, standard price reporting is still an essential responsibility of a pricing team’s function—but there’s more to it. It is also lower-tech than a competitive intelligence strategy and can rely on route heuristics.

    Think of it as data-in, data-out. It deals with pricing operations like:

    • Weekly price movements: Seeing which competitors, product categories, and individual items had pricing shifts in the short-term
    • Basic price indices: Outlining benchmarks to watch how your own, and your competitors’, products are trending in the market
    • Price competitiveness metrics: Setting thresholds that show whether your products are priced below, above, or equal to your competition for general trend reporting

    Standard price reporting is fundamental for operational teams that manage price adjustments in the short term. It can also help teams remain agile and reactive to market condition changes.

    It’s likely that your team already has standard reporting strategies or tools to help them with tactical execution. But are they harnessing competitive intelligence correctly with your help?

    Characteristics of Competitive Intelligence

    While standard price reporting is like checking the weather, competitive intelligence is like being a meteorologist who measures atmospheric changes, predicts storms, and scientifically analyzes weather patterns to keep everyone informed and in the know.

    Competitive intelligence goes well beyond simply tracking price movements and benchmarking them against a single set of standards. Competitive intelligence helps steer teams in a strategic direction based on insights from the market. It can drive long-term business success and is one of your best tools to ‘steer the ship’ as a retail leader.

    Here are some of the essential elements of competitive intelligence:

    • Strategic insights: Including but not limited to understanding your competitors’ pricing strategy, promotions, and product positioning
    • Market-wide patterns: Identifying trends based on geography, product category, or individual SKU across retailers to inform broader strategies
    • Long-term trends: Taking historical market and competitor data and combining it with real-time retail data to predict future price movements as shifts in consumer behavior to inform pricing strategies

    The pricing team serves as a critical strategic partner to senior leadership, delivering the cross-functional insights and market analysis needed to inform C-suite decision-making. By equipping executives with a holistic view of the competitive landscape, pricing gaps, and emerging trends, the team empowers leadership to align pricing strategies with broader business objectives.

    This partnership enables senior leaders to guide day-to-day pricing operations with confidence—ensuring tactical execution aligns with corporate goals, monitoring strategy effectiveness, and maintaining competitive agility. Through ongoing market intelligence and scenario modeling, the pricing function helps leadership proactively position the brand, capitalize on untapped opportunities, and future-proof revenue streams.

    Different Audiences, Different Needs

    As mentioned, there is a place for both standard price reporting and competitive intelligence. They have different roles to play, and different teams find them valuable. Since standard reporting mainly focuses on day-to-day shifts and being able to react to real-time changes, operational teams find it most useful.

    On the other hand, competitive intelligence is a tool that leadership can use to shape overarching pricing strategies. The insights from competitive intelligence drive operational activities over months and quarters, whereas standard reporting drives actions daily.

    To succeed in pricing, you need to rely on a combination of tactical standard reporting and competitive intelligence for long-term planning. With both, you can successfully navigate the ever-fluctuating retail market.

    Price Reporting for Operational Teams

    Your operational team is responsible for making pricing adjustments that directly impact sales volume. Automated data aggregation and AI-powered analytics can make this process faster and more accurate by eliminating the need for manual intervention.

    Instead of spending hours identifying changes, standard reporting tools surface the most critical areas that need attention and recommend adjustments. This helps operational teams react fast to shifting market conditions.

    Key functions of standard price reporting include:

    • Daily/weekly pricing decisions: Frequent price adjustments based on market trends will help your company remain competitive across entire product categories. With automated, real-time dashboards, your pricing team can monitor broad category-level pricing shifts and make necessary adjustments accordingly.
    • Individual SKU management: Not all pricing changes happen at the category level. Standard reporting also allows teams to view price and promotion changes on individual SKUs down to the zip code. It’s important to have targeted, granular insights when a change occurs even on a single SKU, especially because these individual changes are easy to miss. Advanced product matching algorithms can tie together exact products across retailers to monitor items conjointly. By incorporating similar product matching technologies beyond standard reporting, your teams can monitor individual price changes on comparable products.
    • Immediate action items: The best standard reporting tools alert pricing teams when there has been a change in competitor pricing and give them recommendations for what to change. If a competitor launches a flash sale or an aggressive discount program, your team should know as fast as possible which product to adjust. Without this functionality, teams can miss important changes or experience a delay in action that results in lost sales or customer perception.

    Competitive Intelligence for Leadership

    For Senior Retail Executives, Category Directors, and Pricing Strategy Leaders, pricing cannot only be about reacting to individual competitor price changes. Instead, you must proactively think about your market positioning and brand perception. Doing this without a complete competitive intelligence strategy can feel like throwing darts while blindfolded. Sometimes, you’ll hit the target, but mostly, you’ll miss or only come close. Competitive intelligence tools can help you hit that target every time. They leverage big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and predictive modeling to help you derive holistic insights to understand your current positioning relative to the current and future pricing landscape.

    Core strategic functions of competitive intelligence include:

    • Strategic planning: Competitive intelligence tools can help you forecast competitor behavior, economic shifts, and category-specific patterns you’d otherwise overlook (ex, price drops before new releases, subscription or bundling trends, or seasonable price cycles). Instead of reacting to a change, your team can already have made changes or at least know what playbook to implement.
    • Market positioning: Geographic pricing intelligence built into competitive intelligence tools can help you understand variations across locations and optimize multiple channels simultaneously. This can be the foundation of regional pricing strategies that factor in local economies and consumer perception.
    • Long-term decision-making: You can use competitive intelligence technology to align your pricing strategy with upcoming seasonal trends isolated using historical data, predicted economic shifts, and changes in customer purchasing behavior. This aggregate view of the pricing landscape will help you step out of the weeds and make better company decisions.

    From Data to Strategy – Transforming Basic Price Data

    Shifting your focus from isolated, reactive data to broader market trends is the key to going from basic price reporting to real competitive intelligence. Never forget the importance of real-time data, but know it’s your responsibility as a leader to bring a broader viewpoint to operations.

    Transforming from basic price data to competitive intelligence involves:

    1. Harnessing the data
      • Pattern recognition: Your solution should help you identify repeat pricing behaviors and competitor strategies
    2. Figuring out what to do with the data
      • Strategic implications: It should help you understand how your pricing changes will affect customer perception of your brand
    3. Doing something with the insights from your data
      • Action planning: The solution should help you create proactive strategies that position you as a market leader, leaving your competition to try to keep up with you instead of vice versa

    Leveraging Technology for Competitive Intelligence

    Technology is at the heart of leveling up your standard price reporting game. If you want industry-leading competitive intelligence, you can leverage DataWeave’s comprehensive pricing intelligence solution with built-in competitive intelligence capabilities and features for your operational teams.

    You can also uncover gaps and stay competitive in the dynamic world of eCommerce. It provides brands with the competitive intelligence they need to promptly adapt to market demand and competitors’ pricing. Stay ahead of market shifts by configuring your own alerts for price fluctuations on important SKUs, categories, or brands, all time-stamped and down to the zip.

    And since our platform relies on human-backed AI technology, you can have complete confidence in your data’s accuracy at any scale. If you want to bring a new strategic mindset to your pricing team, consider adding competitive intelligence to your tech stack. If you want to learn more, connect with our team at DataWeave today.

  • Preparing for Tariff Impact: A Retailer’s Guide to Price Intelligence

    Preparing for Tariff Impact: A Retailer’s Guide to Price Intelligence

    The power to impose tariffs on foreign countries is one of the most impactful measures a government has at their disposal. The government can use this power for various reasons: to punish rivals, equalize trade, give domestic products a comparative advantage, or collect more funds for the federal government.

    Whatever the reason, tariffs have real-world impacts on brands and retailers selling in a global economy. They effectively make products more expensive for some and comparatively cheaper for others. Since tariffs can be added or removed at the drop of a hat, retail executives, category managers, and pricing teams trying to keep up have their work cut out for them.

    You’ve come to the right place if you’re wondering how to prepare for and respond to potential tariffs. The answer lies in technology that will make you flexible when you need to react to policy changes. Establishing workflows and processes embedded with pricing intelligence can help you stay competitive even when global politics intercepts your business.

    Understanding Tariff Impact

    Before diving into tariffs’ implications on pricing strategies, we need to understand how tariffs work and the current economic environment. Tariffs are a government’s tax on products a foreign country sells to domestic buyers. You might remember President Trump’s expanded tariff policy in September 2018. It placed a 10% tax on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports for three months before raising to a rate of 25% in January 2019. At that time, an American buyer would pay the original price of the goods plus the tax to the American government. Many additional tariffs and counter-tariffs by other countries were enacted during Trump’s first term in office, including the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, resulting in a trade war.

    Announcements of when, where, and on what new tariffs will be imposed are unpredictable. The only predictable thing is that this type of market volatility is here to stay. Pricing teams should adjust their mindsets to assume that volatility may always be on the horizon. This is because tariffs have many cost implications. Besides the flat rate imposed by the government on a certain product, tariffs have historically raised the price of all goods.

    In economic terms, tariffs create a multiplier effect. Consider a tariff placed on gasoline imported from Canada. This measure may encourage American drilling but will have immediate ripple effects throughout the economy. Everything that relies on ground transportation will increase in price, at least in the short term.

    This means that a fashion brand that sources and manufactures its entire line domestically will incur more costs since transportation will be more expensive. If fashion companies act like most companies, they will pass that added tax burden on to the consumer through higher prices. The company will make this decision based on how sensitive its consumers are to price increases, i.e., the elasticity of demand. These interwoven relationships extend across industries and products, affecting most retailers somehow.

    Of course, category exposure varies by industry and sector. Tariffs are known to impact specific industries more than others. For example, steel, electronics, and agriculture products are at risk of price fluctuations based on their reliance on imported components. These have high category exposure. Some industries reliant on domestic production with stable input costs are less prone to category exposure. These include domestic power grids, natural gas, real estate, and handmade goods. No matter which industry you’re in, however, expect some spill over.

    Preparation Strategies

    Strategies to battle disruption in retail

    Forward-thinking leaders can help position their teams for success in the face of pricing volatility brought on by tariffs. The key is to enable teams to sense disruptions quickly and provide a way to take corrective action that doesn’t diminish sales. Here are three strategies you can implement ahead of time that will help keep you competitive during tariff disruption.

    Cost Monitoring

    Start by getting a firm handle on internal and external costs. Understand and analyze fluctuations in the cost of raw materials, production, and supply chain for your business to operate. Make sure that your products are priced with pre-defined logic so changes in price on one SKU don’t create confusion with another. For example, faux leather costs rise while genuine leather stays the same. In that case, a leather version of a product should be raised to reflect the price increase in the pleather variation, not to devalue the perception of luxury.

    Next, you will want to understand historical pricing trends as well as pricing indexes across your categories. These insights can help your teams anticipate cost fluctuations before they even arise and mitigate the risk that economic shifts create, even unexpected tariffs.

    Competition Tracking

    Tracking your competition is likely already a strategy you have in mind. But how well are your teams executing this important task? If they’re trying to watch for market shifts and adjust pricing in real time without the help of technology, things are likely slipping through the cracks.

    Competitive intelligence solutions help retailers discover all competitive SKUs across the e-commerce market, monitor for real-time pricing shifts, and take action to mitigate risk. You need an “always-on” competitive pricing strategy now so that the second a tariff is announced, you can see how it’s affecting your market. This way, you can maintain price competitiveness and avoid margin erosion when competitors’ pricing changes in response to a tariff or other market shift.

    Consumer Impact Assessment

    The multiplier effect is felt throughout the supply chain when tariffs are implemented. The effect can affect consumers in a number of ways and cause them to become spending averse in certain areas. Often, during times of economic hardship, grocery items remain relatively inelastic. This is because consumers continue to purchase essentials regardless of price changes. Conversely, the price of eating out or home delivery becomes more elastic since consumers cut back on dining expenses when costs rise across their shopping basket.

    You need to establish clear visibility into the results of your pricing changes. The goal should be to monitor progress and measure the ROI on specific and broad pricing changes across your assortment. Conducting market share impact analysis will also help you determine if you are losing out on potential customers or whether a decline in sales is being felt across your competition. Impact analysis tools can help your company check actual deployed price changes in real time.

    Response Framework

    Tariff response action plan for retailers

    Once you’ve prepared your team with strategies and technologies to set them up for success, it’s time to think about what to do once a tariff is announced or implemented. Here are three real-time decision-making strategies you should consider before your feet are to the fire. Having these in your back pocket will help you avoid financial disruption.

    Price Adjustment Strategies

    Think about how you strategically adjust prices. These could include percentage increases, flat rate increases, or absorbed via other strategies like bundling. You should also determine a cost increase threshold that you’re willing to absorb before raising prices. Think about the importance of remaining price attractive to consumers and weigh the risk of increasing prices past consumers’ ability or willingness to pay.

    Promotion Planning

    Folding increased costs into value-added offerings for consumers can be a good way to retain customer sentiment and sales volume without negatively affecting profit margins. You can leverage discounts, promotions, or bundling options to sell more of an item to a customer at a lower per-unit cost.

    What you don’t want to do is panic-adjust prices in response to tariffs of competitor moves. Instead, you can use a tool competitor intelligence solutions to watch if your competition is holding prices steady or adjusting. With full information about pricing at your disposal, you can make better decisions on your promotional strategy and not undercut yourself or lose customer loyalty.

    Alternative Sourcing

    Let’s face it: putting all your eggs in one basket is bad for business. Instead of relying solely on a single supplier for production, you should have a diverse set of suppliers ready and able to shift production when tariffs are announced. If a tariff impacts Chinese exports, having a backup supplier in Vietnam can prevent added costs entirely. You can also consider strategies like bulk pricing, set pricing, or shifting entirely to domestic suppliers.

    Forward Buying

    Proactively stockpile inventory by purchasing large quantities of at-risk products before tariffs take effect. This strategy locks in lower costs and ensures supply continuity during disruptions. However, balance this with careful demand forecasting to avoid overstocking, which ties up cash flow and incurs storage costs. Use historical sales data and tariff implementation timelines to optimize order volumes—this is especially effective for products with stable demand or long shelf lives.

    Market Intelligence Requirements

    Preparing your pricing teams and giving them a framework upon which to act when tariffs are announced doesn’t have to be complicated. You can get access to the right data on costs, competitors, and consumer behavior with DataWeave’s pricing intelligence capability.

    We provide retailers with insights on pricing trends, category exposure, and competitor adjustments. Our AI-powered competitor intelligence solutions allow you to get timely alerts whenever a significant change happens. This can include changes to competitor pricing and category-level shifts that you’d otherwise react to when it’s too late.

    These automated insights can also help you track historical pricing trends, elasticity, and margin impact to construct a clear response framework in an emergency. Additionally, our analytics capabilities can help you identify patterns to power pre-emptive pricing and promotional strategies.

    Getting the right pricing intelligence strategy in place now can prevent disaster later. Think through your preparedness strategy and how you want your teams to respond in the event of a new tariff, and consider how much easier reacting accurately would be with all the data needed at your fingertips. Reach out to us to know more.

  • Beyond MAP Pricing: Strategic Approaches for Brands and Retailers

    Beyond MAP Pricing: Strategic Approaches for Brands and Retailers

    Many retailers view minimum advertised pricing (MAP) policies as a necessary evil since they present several challenges for competitive positioning. In an idealistic free market, there wouldn’t be a need for MAP policies, and healthy competition would do the work of setting the final advertised price.

    However, MAP policies aren’t beneficial only for brands; they also greatly benefit retailers. This article will examine why MAP pricing can be a strategic advantage for both brands and retailers. We’ll also look at ways brand managers and retail pricing teams can navigate MAP requirements to maintain profitability and safeguard customer trust.

    Understanding MAP Fundamentals

    Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) is a policy set by brands that requires their sales channels to price the brand’s products at a minimum dollar value. Retailers are free to price the items higher, but the advertised price is never to exceed the minimum threshold.

    This agreement is established at the outset of a relationship or new product launch and can change at the brand’s discretion. Consumers typically see only the minimum advertised price when they search for a product across competing retailers. This means retailers need to find other ways to differentiate themselves beyond offering the lowest price.

    But a retailer can still effectively price the product at a lower cost to win sales away from the competition. This comes in the form of discounts applied at checkout, bundled deals, or other promotions that affect the final cart but not the advertised price. Only the advertised price must remain within MAP guidelines. This gives retailers a way to set themselves apart from the competition while still protecting the brand.

    A minimum advertised price has three central values: one for the brand, one for the retailer, and one for both.

    1. Brand or manufacturer: A MAP policy protects the brand’s value and prevents price erosion. If a retailer consistently undercuts a product’s price to make it more competitive, customers may begin to perceive the brand as lower in value over time. It can cause the brand to appear less premium than if prices hold steady. If a customer pays full price one day and then sees the same item advertised at a lower base price the next, it can weaken brand loyalty and cause dissatisfaction.
    2. Retailer: Minimum advertised pricing policies prevent retailers from engaging in a pricing war with one another, driving the price of an item down and hurting margins. This race to the bottom is bad for business. Apart from reducing profits, it discourages sellers from investing in marketing and other activities that drive sales. It also means that smaller retailers can compete with larger retailers, effectively leveling the playing field across the market.
    3. All parties: The issue of counterfeit and unauthorized sellers on the grey market plagues retailers and brands. One of the most straightforward ways to identify these sellers that undercut prices and damage brand perception is to track who is pricing products outside of agreements. Unauthorized or counterfeit sellers can be identified by establishing a MAP policy and monitoring who sells at the wrong price. Then, official legal action can be taken to prevent those merchants from selling the product.

    Brand Perspective

    Developing a clear and precise MAP policy is an important option for brands looking to stay competitive. Make sure you outline the minimum advertised price for each product for each sales channel and do so by geography. Write clear instructions on how discounts, promotions, and sales can be applied to the advertised price to avoid misunderstandings later. Ensure you work with your legal team to fill in any gaps before presenting them to retailers.

    If you find sellers acting outside the MAP policy, you must act swiftly to enforce your MAP policy. Cease and desist orders are the most common enforcement strategy a brand can use on unauthorized sellers and counterfeiters. But there are legal considerations for authorized sellers, too. You may need to fine the retailer for damages, restrict inventory replenishment until prices have been adjusted, remove seller authorization by terminating the relationship entirely, or escalate to your legal team.

    Open communication between the brand and retailer is in everyone’s best interest to ensure minimum pricing is being used. Have explanatory documents available for your retailers’ non-legal teams to reference while they set prices. These can take the form of checklists, video explainers, or even well-informed brand representatives working closely with retail pricing teams. It’s likely that some MAP violations will occur from time to time. The importance your retail partners place on fixing those errors will help you determine how much goodwill you will give them in the future.

    Brands can consider rewarding retailers that consistently adhere to minimum advertised price policies. Rewards often take the form of more lenient promotion policies, especially during major holidays like Christmas, Prime Day, or Black Friday. However, it’s never advisable to relax the actual MAP policy to allow one retailer to advertise a lower price year-round.

    Retailer Strategies

    A retailer can take several approaches to complying with a brand’s MAP policy while still maximizing sales. First, you need a dedicated compliance process spearheaded by compliance specialists or, better yet, enabled by technology. Embedding a process that checks for MAP violations into daily or weekly operations will prevent problems before brands become aware.

    Automated price tracking tools can help discover discrepancies so that you don’t accidentally violate a MAP agreement. Make sure MAP training extends beyond your pricing team and includes marketing. Anyone who participates in promotions or events should be made aware of the agreements made with specific brands. Determine if there are alternative promotion methods available to attract customers. You could offer free shipping on certain items, bundle giveaways, or apply cart-wide discounts at checkout.

    Monitoring your competition in real time will also help you stay ahead. If you discover a competitor undercutting your prices, bring this to the attention of your brand representative. This can build loyalty with the brand and help prevent lost sales due to market share loss.

    Digital Implementation for MAP Compliance

    Pricing teams at brands and retailers manually attempting to manage MAP pricing will lag behind the competition without help. They must discover, monitor, and enforce MAP compliance simply and effectively.

    Over the past several years, there has been a seemingly exponential proliferation of online sellers, complicating the industry and making it nearly impossible to find and discover all instances of every product you sell. It’s further complicated by marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and eBay, which are full of individual unauthorized sellers and resellers.

    Implementing a digital tool is the first step to effectively discovering and monitoring MAP compliance, even across these marketplaces. This tool should monitor all competition for you and discover imbalances in pricing parity.

    DataWeave’s MAP Violations Merchant Analytics solution has AI-backed software that scours the web for your products. It uses identifiers like UPCs and product titles and compares imagery to find where the product is sold. Our AI-powered image recognition capabilities are especially helpful in identifying inauthentic listings that may be counterfeit products or unauthorized sellers. It also has built-in geographic and channel-specific MAP monitoring capabilities to help with localized enforcement.

    The tool can aggregate all this data and present dashboard views of your own and competitors’ pricing that are easy to digest and act on. After all, retailers need to monitor their own MAP compliance as well as the competition’s. Brands can also track competitor sellers’ networks to explore potential new retail partnerships and grow their network reach.

    The MAP Violations Merchant Analytics solution has automated violation alerts and advanced reporting built into it. This means you can get real-time alerts instead of pouring through dashboards searching for exceptions each week. For deeper insights, the dashboards provide time-stamped proof of which sellers are undercutting MAP minimums, so you have all the information you need to make a case against them. Discovering repeat offenders is easy with historical trends dashboards that show which sellers have a history of violations.

    With all this information on who is violating what—and when—enforcement becomes much more manageable. Send cease and desist orders to unauthorized sellers and start having conversations with authorized sellers acting outside of your agreement. Acting quickly will help prevent hits to your brand’s reputation, price erosion, and lost sales.

    DataWeave’s MAP solution gives you the competitive edge to effectively discover MAP violations, monitor market activity, and act quickly when an issue is discovered.

    Make MAP Compliance a Strategic Advantage

    Basic MAP compliance and enforcement isn’t simply about setting pricing policies anymore. These policies are foundational to brand strategies, maintaining good relationships with retailers, and establishing long-term profitability for your business.

    When you let MAP violations go unchecked, it can erode your margins, damage how your customers perceive your brand, and create confusion across channels. Discovering, monitoring, and acting on MAP violations is much easier with the help of tools like DataWeave’s AI-enabled MAP Violations Merchant Analytics.

    Ready to take control of MAP pricing at your company? Request a MAP policy assessment from DataWeave today!

  • Portfolio Enhancement Through Price Relationship Management: Building Coherent Pricing Across Product Lines

    Portfolio Enhancement Through Price Relationship Management: Building Coherent Pricing Across Product Lines

    Do you remember when the movie Super Size Me came out? If you missed it, it was about the harmful effects of eating fast food too often. One aspect of the film that stands out is McDonald’s clever use of pricing to encourage consumers to buy bigger—and therefore more expensive—meals.

    Hungry patrons could upgrade their meal to a Super Size version for only a few cents more. In doing so, McDonald’s was able to capitalize on perceived value, i.e., getting more product for an apparent lower total price for the volume. It encouraged restaurant-goers to spend a little more while feeling like they got a great deal. It was a smart use of strategic pricing.

    There are hundreds of pricing relationship types like this one that pricing leaders need to be aware of and can use to their advantage when creating their team’s pricing strategy and workflows. You need to maintain profitable and logical price relationships across your entire product portfolio while keeping up with the competition. After all, the gimmick to Super Size would never have worked if the upgrade had been of less value than just buying another burger, for example.

    In this article, we’ll examine more real-world examples of pricing challenges so you can consider the best ways to manage complex price relationships. We’ll examine things like package sizes, brands, and product lines and how they’re intertwined in systematic price relationship management. Read on to learn how to prevent margin erosion, improve customer perception of your brand, and keep your pricing consistent and competitive.

    The Price Relationship Challenge

    Pricing is one of the most challenging aspects of managing a retail brand. This is especially true if you are dealing with a large assortment of products, including private label items, the same products of differing sizes, and hundreds, or even thousands, of competing products to link. Inconsistencies in your price relationship management can confuse customers, erode trust, and harm your bottom line.

    Let’s take a look at a few common pitfalls in portfolio pricing that you might run into in real life to better understand the impact on customer perception, trust, and sales.

    Pricing Relationship Challenges Retailers Need to Account For

    Private Label vs. Premium Product Pricing

    Let’s consider a nuanced scenario where price relationships between a retailer’s private label and premium branded products create an unexpected customer perception. Imagine you’re in a supermarket, comparing prices on peanut butter. You’ve always opted for the store’s private-label brand, “Best Choice,” because it’s typically the more affordable option. Here’s what you find:

    • Best Choice (Private Label) 16 oz – $3.50
    • Jif (National Brand) 16 oz – $3.25

    At first glance, this pricing feels off—shouldn’t the private label be the cheaper option? If a customer has been conditioned to expect savings with private-label products, seeing a national brand undercut that price could make them pause.
    This kind of pricing misalignment can erode trust in private-label value and even push customers toward the national brand. When price relationships don’t follow consumer expectations, they create friction in the shopping experience and may lead to lost sales for the retailer’s own brand.

    Value Size Relationships

    A strong value-size relationship ensures that customers receive logical pricing as they move between different sizes of the same product. When this relationship is misaligned, customers may feel confused or misled, which can lead to lost sales and eroded trust.

    Let’s look at a real-world example using a well-known branded product—salad dressing. Imagine you’re shopping for Hidden Valley Ranch (HVR) dressing and see the following pricing on the shelf:

    • HVR 16 oz – $3.99
    • HVR 24 oz – $6.49
    • HVR 36 oz – $8.99

    At first glance, you might assume that buying a larger size offers better value. However, a quick calculation shows that the price per ounce actually increases with size:

    • 16 oz = $0.25 per ounce
    • 24 oz = $0.27 per ounce
    • 36 oz = $0.25 per ounce

    Customers expecting a discount for buying in bulk may feel misled or frustrated when they realize the mid-size option (24 oz) is actually the most expensive per ounce. This mispricing could drive shoppers to purchase the smallest size instead of the intended larger, more profitable unit—or worse, lead them to a competitor with clearer pricing structures.

    Retailers must maintain logical price progression by ensuring that price per unit decreases as the product size increases. This not only improves customer trust but also encourages higher-volume purchases, driving profitability while maintaining a fair value perception.

    Price Link Relationships

    A well-structured price link relationship ensures customers can easily compare similar offerings of the same product and size. When the pricing across different versions or variations of the same item isn’t clear or consistent, it can confuse customers and damage trust, ultimately leading to missed sales and a negative brand perception.

    Let’s break this down with an example of a popular product—coffee. Imagine you’re shopping for a bag of Starbucks coffee and you see the following pricing on the shelf:

    • Starbucks Classic Coffee, 12 oz – $7.99
    • Starbucks Coffee, Mocha, 12 oz – $9.99
    • Starbucks Ground Coffee, Pumpkin Spice, 12 oz – $12.99

    At first glance, the product is the same size (12 oz) across all options, but the prices vary significantly. One might assume that the price difference is due to differences in quality or features, but what if there’s no clear indication of why the different flavors are priced higher than the standard?

    After investigating, you may realize that the only differences are related to different variants—like “Mocha” or “Pumpkin Spice” rather than any significant changes in the product’s core attributes. When customers realize they’re paying a premium for just different flavors, without any tangible difference in product quality, it can lead to feelings of confusion and frustration.

    Retailers must ensure that price links between similar offerings are justifiable by clearly communicating what differentiates each product. This avoids the perception that customers are being charged extra for little added value, building trust and encouraging repeat purchases. By maintaining transparent price link relationships, businesses can foster customer loyalty, increase sales, and drive better overall satisfaction.

    What is the Foundational Process to Tackle the Price Relationship Challenge?

    Now that we’ve reviewed several challenges brands face when pricing their products, what can be done about them?

    If you’re a pricing leader, you must create a robust pricing strategy that considers customer expectations, competitive data, sizing, and the overall value progressions of your product assortment. These are the three foundational steps to solve your price relationship challenges.

    1. First, you need to group products together accurately.
    2. Second, you need to establish price management rules around the group of related items.
    3. Third, you should set in place a process to review your assortment each week to see if anything is out of tolerance.

    This process is difficult, if not impossible, to manage manually. To effectively set up and execute these steps, you’ll need the help of an advanced pricing intelligence system.

    Implementation Strategy

    Want to know how to roll out a price relationship management strategy? Follow this implementation strategy for a practical way to get started.

    1. Set up price relationship rules: Determine which of your products go together, such as same products with different sizes or color options. Assign different product assortment groups and determine tolerances for scaling prices based on volume or unit counts.
    2. Monitoring and maintenance: Establish rules to alert the appropriate party when something is out of tolerance or a price change has been discovered with a competitive product.
    3. Exception management: Only spend time actioning the exceptions instead of pouring through clean data each week, looking for discrepancies. This will save your team time and help address the most significant opportunities first.
    4. Change management considerations: Think about the current processes you have in place. How will this affect the individuals on your team who have managed pricing operations? Establish a methodology for rolling this new strategy and technology out over select product assortments or brands one at a time to build trust with internal players.

    DataWeave offers features specifically built to help pricing teams manage pricing strategies. These applications can help you optimize profit margins and improve your overall market positioning for long-term success. A concerted effort to create brand hierarchies within your own product assortment from the get-go, followed by routine monitoring and real-time updates, can make all the difference in your pricing efforts.

    Within DataWeave, you can create price links between your products (value sizing) and those of the competition. These will alert you to exceptions when discrepancies are discovered outside your established tolerance levels. If a linked set of your products in different sizes shows inconsistent pricing based on scaled volumes, your team can quickly know how to make changes. If a competitor’s price drops significantly, you can react to that change before you lose sales.

    DataWeave even offers AI-driven similar product matching capabilities, which can help you manage pricing for private label products by finding and analyzing similar products across the market.

    If you want to learn more about price relationship management, connect with our team at DataWeave today.

  • Maximizing Competitive Match Rates: The Foundation of Effective Price Intelligence

    Maximizing Competitive Match Rates: The Foundation of Effective Price Intelligence

    Merchants make countless pricing decisions every day. Whether you’re a brand selling online, a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, or another seller attempting to navigate the vast world of commerce, figuring out the most effective price intelligence strategy is essential. Having your plan in place will help you price your products in the sweet spot that enhances your price image and maximizes profits.

    For the best chance of success, your overall pricing strategy must include competitive intelligence.

    Many retailers focus their efforts on just collecting the data. But that’s only a portion of the puzzle. The real value lies in match accuracy and knowing exactly which competitor products to compare against. In this article, we will dive deeper into cutting-edge approaches that combine the traditional matching techniques you already leverage with AI to improve your match rates dramatically.

    If you’re a pricing director, category manager, commercial leader, or anyone else who deals with pricing intelligence, this article will help you understand why competitive match rates matter and how you can improve yours.

    Change your mindset from tactical to strategic and see the benefits in your bottom line.

    The Match Rate Challenge

    To the layman, tracking and comparing prices against the competition seems easy. Just match up two products and see which ones are the same! In reality, it’s much more challenging. There are thousands of products to discover, analyze, compare, and derive subjective comparisons from. Not only that, product catalogs across the market are constantly evolving and growing, so keeping up becomes a race of attrition with your competitors.

    Let’s put it into focus. Imagine you’re trying to price a 12-pack of Coca-Cola. This is a well-known product that, hypothetically, should be easy to identify across the web. However, every retailer uses their own description in their listing. Some examples include:

    How product names differ on websites - Amazon Example
    Why matching products is a challenge - Naming conventions on Target
    Match Rate Challenge - how product names differ on retailers - Wamlart
    • Retailer A lists it as “Coca-Cola 12 Fl. Oz 12 Pack”
    • Retailer B shows “Coca Cola Classic Soda Pop Fridge Pack, 12 Fl. Oz Cans, 12-Pack”
    • Retailer C has “Coca-Cola Soda – 12pk/12 fl oz Cans”

    While a human can easily deduce that these are the same product, the automated system you probably have in place right now is most likely struggling. It cannot tell the difference between the retailers’ unique naming conventions, including brand name, description, bundle, unit count, special characters, or sizing.

    This has real-world business impacts if your tools cannot accurately compare the price of a Coca-Cola 12-pack across the market.

    Why Match Rates Matter

    If your competitive match rates are poor, you aren’t seeing the whole picture and are either overcharging, undercharging, or reacting to market shifts too slowly.

    Overcharging can result in lost sales, while undercharging may result in out-of-stock due to spikes in demand you haven’t accounted for. Both are recipes to lose out on potential revenue, disappoint customers, and drive business to your competitors.

    What you need is a sophisticated matching capability that can handle the tracking of millions of competitive prices each week. It needs to be able to compare using hundreds of possible permutations, something that is impossible for pricing teams to do manually, especially at scale. With technology to make this connection, you aren’t missing out on essential competitive intelligence.

    The Business Impact

    Besides the bottom-line savings, accurately matching competitor products for pricing intelligence has other business impacts that can help your business. Adding technology to your workflow to improve match rates can help identify blind spots, improve decision quality, and improve operational efficiency.

    • Pricing Blind Spots
      • Missing competitor prices on key products
      • Inability to detect competitive threats
      • Delayed response to market changes
    • Decision Quality
      • Incomplete competitive coverage leads to suboptimal pricing
      • Risk of pricing decisions based on wrong product comparisons
    • Operational Efficiency
      • Manual verification costs
      • Time spent reconciling mismatched products
      • Resources needed to maintain price position

    Current Industry Challenges

    As mentioned, the #1 reason businesses like yours probably aren’t already finding the most accurate matches is that not all sites carry comparable product codes. If every listing had a consistent product code, it would be very easy to match that code to your code base. In fact, most retailers currently only achieve 60-70% match rates using their traditional methods.

    Different product naming conventions, constantly changing product catalogs, and regional product variations contribute to the industry challenges, not to mention the difficulty of finding brand equivalencies and private label comparisons across the competition. So, if you’re struggling, just know everyone else is as well. However, there is a significant opportunity to get ahead of your competition if you can improve your match rates with technology.

    The Matching Hierarchy

    • Direct Code Matching: There are a number of ways to start finding matches across the market. The base tier of the hierarchy of most accurate approaches is Direct Code matching. Most likely, your team already has a process in place that can compare UPC to UPC, for example. When no standard codes are listed, your team is left with a blind spot. This poses limitations in modern retail but is an essential first step to identifying the “low-hanging fruit” to start getting matches.
    • Non-Code-Based Matching: The next level of the hierarchy is implementing non-code-based matching strategies. This is when there are no UPCs, DPCIs, ASINs, or other known codes that make it easy to do one-to-one comparisons. These tools can analyze complex metrics like direct size comparisons, unique product descriptions, and features to find more accurate matches. They can look deep into the listing to extract data points beyond a code, even going as far as analyzing images and video content to help find matches. Advanced technologies for competitive matching can help pricing teams by adding different comparison metrics to their arsenal beyond code-based. 
    • Private Label Conversions: Up until this level of the hierarchy, comparisons relied on direct comparisons. Finding identical codes and features and naming similarities is excellent for figuring out one-to-one comparisons, but when there is no similar product to compare with for pricing intelligence, things get more complicated. This is the third tier of the matching hierarchy. It’s the ability to find similar product matches for ‘like’ products. This can be used for private label conversions and to create meaningful comparisons without direct matches.
    • Similar Size Mappings: This final rung on the matching hierarchy adds another layer of advanced calculations to the comparison capability. Often, retailers and merchants list a product with different sizing values. One may choose to bundle products, break apart packs to sell as single items or offer a special-sized product manufactured just for them. 
    Similar Size Mappings - product matching hierarchy - Walmart
    Similar Size Mappings - product matching hierarchy - Costco

    While at the end of the day, the actual product is the same, when there are unusual size permutations, it can be hard to identify the similarities. Technology can help with value size relationships, package variation handling, size equalization, and unit normalization.

    The AI Advantage

    AI is the natural solution for efficiently executing competitive product matching at scale. DataWeave offers solutions for pricing teams to help them reach over 95% product match accuracy. The tools leverage the most modern Natural Language Processing models for ingesting and analyzing product descriptions. Image recognition capabilities apply methods such as object detection, background removal, and image quality enhancement to focus on an individual product’s key features to improve match accuracy.

    Deep learning models have been trained on years of data to perform pattern recognition in product attributes and to learn from historical matches. All of these capabilities, and others, automate the attribute matching process, from code to image to feature description, to help pricing teams build the most accurate profile of products across the market for highly accurate pricing intelligence.

    Implementation Strategy

    We understand that moving away from manual product comparison methods can be challenging. Every organization is different, but some fundamental steps can be followed for success when leveling up your pricing teams’ workflow.

    1. First, conduct a baseline assessment. Figure out where you are on the Matching hierarchy. Are you still only doing direct code-based comparisons? Has your team branched out to compare other non-code-based identifiers?
    2. Next, establish clear match rate targets for yourself. If your current match rate is aligned with industry norms, strive to significantly improve it, aiming for a high alignment that supports maximizing the match rate. Break this down into achievable milestones across different stages of the implementation process.
    3. Work with your vendor on quality control processes. It may be worth running your current process in tandem to be able to calculate the improvements in real time. With a veteran technology provider like DataWeave, you can rely on the most cutting-edge technology combined with human-in-the-loop checks and balances and a team of knowledgeable support personnel. Additionally, for teams wanting direct control, DataWeave’s Approve/Disapprove Module lets your team review and validate match recommendations before they go live, maintaining full oversight of the matching process.
    4. The more data about your products it has, the better your match rates. DataWeave’s competitive intelligence tools also come with a built-in continuous improvement framework. Part of this is the human element that continually ensures high-quality matches, but another is the AI’s ‘learning’ capabilities. Every time the AI is exposed to a new scenario, it learns for the next time.
    5. The final step, ensure cross-functional alignment is achieved. Every one from the C-Suite down should be able to access the synthesized information useful for their role without complex data to sift through. Customized dashboards and reports can help with this process.

    Future-Proofing Match Rates

    The world of retail is constantly evolving. If you don’t keep up, you’re going to be left behind. There are emerging retail channels, like the TikTok shop, and new product identification methods to leverage, like image comparisons. As more products enter the market along with new retailers, figuring out how to scale needs to be taken into consideration. It’s impossible to keep up with manual processes. Instead, think about maximizing your match rates every week and not letting them degrade over time. A combination of scale, timely action, and highly accurate match rates will help you price your products the most competitively.

    Key Takeaways

    Match rates are the foundation of pricing intelligence. You can evaluate how advanced your match rate strategy is based on the matching hierarchy. If you’re still early in your journey, you’re likely still relying on code-to-code matches. However, using a mix of AI and traditional methods, you can achieve a 95% accuracy rate on product matching, leading to overall higher competitive match rates. As a result, with continuous improvement, you will stay ahead of the competition even as the goalposts change and new variables are introduced to the competitive landscape.

    Starting this process to add AI to your pricing strategy can be overwhelming. At DataWeave, we work with you to make the change easy. Talk to us today to know more.

  • Beyond Basic Price Monitoring: Advanced Applications of Competitive Intelligence

    Beyond Basic Price Monitoring: Advanced Applications of Competitive Intelligence

    It’s up to senior leadership, whether you’re a Chief Strategy Officer, Pricing Executive, or Commercial Director, to think big picture about your company’s competitive intelligence strategy. For more junior team members, it’s easy to get caught in the “this is how we’ve always done it” mindset and continue to go through the motions of price monitoring.

    You don’t have that luxury—it’s up to you to find and implement new ways to move beyond basic price monitoring and usher your company into an era of achieving actionable insights through competitive intelligence. There is much more to gain from competitive data than simple price monitoring.

    How can retailers leverage clean, competitive data to uncover strategic insights beyond basic price comparisons? This article will help you shift your mindset from tactical monitoring to strategic insight generation. We’ll see how sophisticated analysis of clean and refined competitive data can reveal competitor strategies, regional and geographic opportunities, and overall market trends.

    It’s time to shift away from standard reporting, which should be left for your pricing owners and end users, and towards gaining competitive intelligence to shape your holistic company pricing strategy. With the right tools, you can make this shift a reality.

    Regional Price Intelligence

    One significant opportunity you should take advantage of is a greater understanding of regional price intelligence. Understanding the nuances that shape how products, categories, and other retailers’ prices according to geographical differences can set your company up to win customer trust and dollars at checkout.

    Understanding geographic and regional pricing strategies

    Geographic price intelligence helps leaders leverage market opportunities based on where sales are happening. Variations in how products and categories are priced across regions often reflect competitor tactics, local demand, and cost structures.

    Let’s consider an example that impacts a broad geography, such as the entire continental United States – egg prices. Eggs are a staple grocery item and are frequently a loss leader in stores. This means they are products priced below their cost specifically to draw customers into stores.

    However, Avian Flu outbreaks affecting millions of birds have become more common recently. These outbreaks drive the cost of eggs higher as flocks must be culled to prevent the spread of the disease. This means that retailers must act to maintain acceptable margins or losses without frightening away customers or losing their trust.

    Avian Flu has been especially bad in Iowa and California. Retailers in these regions face tough decisions during outbreaks. They need to figure out how to balance the high prices required to cover the supply shortages with maintaining consumer trust that this staple product will not be perceived as ‘overpriced.’ Customers expect retailers to be fair even when supply chain issues make it challenging to keep prices stable.

    Another example impacting the broader USA is credit card defaults. Credit card defaults are reaching levels unseen since the financial crisis of 2008. $46 billion worth of credit card balances were written off in the first nine months of 2024 alone. This unprecedented figure highlights the fact that many Americans are struggling financially. Higher-income earners continue to do ok, but lower-income families are feeling the pressure more than ever.

    Understanding the differences between the geographies you sell in can help you construct your pricing strategies better. This is especially true as consumers brace themselves for more anticipated economic hardship.

    Retailers must set realistic financial targets without overpricing their catalogs. Otherwise, they risk losing customers who would otherwise have bought their products. Competitive intelligence can help retailers understand how economic disparities impact core consumer bases.

    Pricing leaders can leverage insights around geographic variations in supply, demand, and competitor pricing to help in situations like these. With how important eggs are, changes to their price can spill over into other categories. And with credit card defaults affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans, having a way to dive into these topics can help shape overarching strategies.

    Customer perception is a recurring theme in competitive intelligence. It’s not only about the actual value your brand offers but the perceived value based on historical context, current events, and competition.

    Leveraging Regional Price Differences for Strategic Advantage

    On the topic of customer perception, there are strategic ways to use customer perception to your advantage. One of these is detecting cross-market arbitrage opportunities using competitive intelligence and actioning them.

    But what is cross-market arbitrage? It’s the practice of exploiting the differences in price across different markets or regions. As a retailer, you can use cross-market arbitrage to your advantage by finding disparities in market conditions and strategically pricing your products to entice customers or offer more value. These opportunities can be in demand, supply, or competitive pricing. Acting quickly in markets where frequent disruptions happen can drive your business forward.

    DataWeave’s advanced competitive intelligence tools can analyze regional market trends to help you respond to real-time local demand fluctuations or cost pressures.

    Local Market Dynamics

    Pricing isn’t a one-size-fits-all operation. Where and what you’re pricing truly matters. Pricing teams should take price zones into account when constructing pricing strategies. This is because pricing isn’t equivalent across locations; it’s localized. Understanding this fact is critical for category-specific considerations at the macro and micro levels.

    This map shows a retailer’s regional price differentials on a breakfast basket. With the ability to access and refine your data, you can better construct maps like this one to track local market dynamics. Determine where you need to differentiate prices based on locality, understand the strategic stance of your competitors, and plan if you start to see changes in competitive price zones.

    Map shows a retailer's regional price differentials on a breakfast basket

    Competitor Strategy Detection

    As a retailer, you should continuously monitor your competitors, whether they’re succeeding or stagnating. One example of a major retailer that is seeing growth even during this challenging economic time is Costco. Costco is an interesting case because they do not have stores in every major city or even in every state.

    Costco has its brand strategy down, and it is tied to the pricing strategy. Costco has committed to its customers to provide quality items at competitive prices, and they’ve delivered even in a volatile economy. Costco has managed to maintain competitive prices on core merchandise and make strategic pricing adjustments on items that matter most to members. Their private label brand, Kirkland Signature, highlights their value-first approach. They continue to lead with price reductions like:

    • Organic Peanut Butter: $11.49 → $9.99
    • Chicken Stock: $9.99 → $8.99
    • Sauvignon Blanc: $7.49 → $6.99

    Costco has figured out how to balance premium offerings for cost-conscious consumers with standardly priced items filling the shopper’s basket. This demonstrates that they have a pricing strategy that relies on competitive intelligence and market trends.

    With the correct data and tools, any retailer can conduct research to discover more about their competitors and gain usable insights into their implemented pricing strategies. Once established, this can act as an early warning signal so you can take action.

    For example, understanding whether a retailer operates with a stable Everyday Low Price (EDLP) strategy or a more dynamic High/Low pricing approach is crucial when building and maintaining the integrity of your pricing strategy.

    Data should be able to show you things like:

    • When holiday price decreases start to accelerate
    • How quickly a retailer responds to cost increases (especially at the category or item level)
    • The cadence of seasonal campaigns and their impact on pricing behavior

    When we move beyond the numbers, these patterns tell a story about how to win in today’s competitive retail landscape. After all, pricing isn’t just a standard reporting tactic. In its truest form, it’s a strategy rooted in understanding the bigger picture of your consumers, competition, and the economy.

    Actionable Intelligence Framework

    With a practical system to turn insights into action, your company’s pricing strategy is much more likely to drive actual results. Merely collecting data and churning out out-of-date reports won’t cut it. Instead, begin to identify patterns and insights for accurate competitive intelligence. Use this simple framework to start setting up a comprehensive competitive intelligence process.

    • Setting up monitoring systems: Leverage technology to monitor and aggregate data on your competition, market trends, and consumer behavior. Ensure the system chosen can clean and refine the data along the way so it’s ready to be analyzed.
    • Creating action triggers: Define clear thresholds and triggers based on key insights. These can be things like price changes of a certain amount, competitor moves, assortment changes, or regional and geographic trends. These triggers should prompt specific, pre-planned actions for your team to capitalize on opportunities.
    • Response protocol development: Change management is easier with a plan. Work on building out and training your teams on protocols for specific triggers. When something arises, they know the protocol to take advantage of the opportunity or mitigate the challenge effectively.
    • Performance measurement: Measure the impact of your team’s protocol-based actions with the help of pre-determined KPIs and then hone your approach to competitive intelligence based on the results.

    Competitive Intelligence at Your Fingertips

    Shifting from a latent standard reporting and price monitoring mindset to a growth mindset centered around competitive intelligence doesn’t need to be a struggle. The key is to lean on the tools that will accelerate your company’s journey to finding the right insights and putting action behind them quickly.

    Start by conducting a competitive intelligence maturity assessment to evaluate your organization’s current state and identify areas for improvement. Then, create a capability development roadmap for your company to track efficacy and progress toward your goal.

    Want to talk to the experts in competitive pricing intelligence? Click here to speak with the DataWeave team!

  • Early Black Friday Deals Analyzed: How Top Retailers Stack Up on Discounts

    Early Black Friday Deals Analyzed: How Top Retailers Stack Up on Discounts

    Black Friday, once confined to a single weekend, has evolved into a shopping season that now stretches well before Thanksgiving. With inflation hovering around 3% and consumer confidence showing signs of recovery, retailers are adapting their promotional calendars to capture early-bird shoppers and maintain a competitive edge.

    Major retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Best Buy, have capitalized on this trend by launching promotions weeks in advance, signaling the traditional holiday rush is now a month-long event. At DataWeave, we put these deals under a microscope.

    Our Methodology

    Using DataWeave’s advanced, AI-powered pricing intelligence platform, we tracked early Black Friday deals across Consumer Electronics, Home & Furniture, Health & Beauty, and Apparel categories. We monitored dedicated Black Friday deal pages on Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Sephora to gather and analyze discount data a week prior to Black Friday weekend.

    Who’s Offering the Best Deals Across Categories?

    Our pre- Black Friday analysis reveals a clear pattern of premium brands offering deeper discounts across categories ahead of the holiday. Here are some key findings around retail players:

    • Walmart emerges as the most aggressive discounter across categories, leading in Health & Beauty (57.07%), Apparel (48.97%), and Consumer Electronics (43.35%).
    • Amazon maintains consistent but lower discounts (28-29%) across categories, suggesting potential deeper cuts ahead.
    • Best Buy and Sephora, both category specialists, play it conservative compared to mass retail players.

    Let’s look at each category more closely to get a detailed snapshot of the deals this Thanksgiving week:

    Health & Beauty

    Our analysis reveals that it’s not electronics, but the health & beauty category that leads with the widest discount range pre Black Friday, making it the category to watch out for.

    • Walmart takes the lead with an aggressive 57.1% average discount in this category, capitalizing on its value-oriented reputation.
    • Beauty specialist Sephora holds modest beauty discounts (32.81%) compared to other retailers.
    • Amazon offers the broadest range of SKUs (571) in the category.
    Avg. Discounts Across Retailers Pre Black Friday 2024 - Health & Beauty

    Among the health & beauty brands we analyzed, cosmetics brand Tarte and viral K-Beauty skincare brand COSRX stand out with discounts above 40%, appealing to cost-conscious beauty enthusiasts.

    Brands with Highest Avg. Discounts Before Black Friday 2024 - Health & Beauty

    Consumer Electronics

    Our pre- Black Friday analysis reveals interesting insights about consumer electronics deals this season.

    • Walmart, once again, emerges as the frontrunner in the category with 43.4% average discounts.
    • Best Buy plays it conservative in electronics (30.75%), despite being a category specialist, but offers the most extensive SKU coverage (3030).
    • Amazon’s consistent 29.7% discount across 1,749 SKUs suggests they’re probably holding back their best deals for Prime members during Black Friday.
    Avg. Discounts Across Retailers Pre Black Friday 2024 - Consumer Electronics

    Brand-specific data for the category reveals significant deals on Speck (48.07%) and smart TV brand Insignia (39.22%), making accessories and mid-tier electronics attractive for early shoppers. Core computing (HP at 32.14%) and electronics brands maintain more conservative discounts. It remains to be seen if this changes on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

    Brands with Highest Avg. Discounts Before Black Friday 2024 - Consumer Electronics

    Apparel

    Our analysis of the apparel category reveals several highlights:

    • In the apparel category too, Walmart dominates with an impressive 49% average discount, effectively targeting price-sensitive shoppers in the fashion segment.
    • Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus, both known for apparel, offer significant discounts at 43.2% and 37.8% respectively.
    • Amazon’s expansive SKU coverage (1344) is countered by a modest 29.5% discount, showing its focus on variety over depth of discounts.
    Avg. Discounts Across Retailers Pre Black Friday 2024 - Apparel

    Premium fashion brands dominate the highest discounts this Black Friday in the apparel category. Vince Camuto leads with over 45.1% average discount. Notably, Levi and Nike’s aggressive 44.43% and 43.50% discounts suggests significant inventory positions or intent to capture market share.

    Brands with Highest Avg. Discounts Before Black Friday 2024 - Apparel

    Home & Furniture

    Our analysis reveals an interesting trend across the category.

    • In the home & furniture category too, Walmart leads at 41.8% average discounts. Target follows closely, but with significantly lesser SKUs on offer.
    • Amazon’s 28.1% discount, though the lowest among major players, spans a substantial 1,982 SKUs, reinforcing its position as a marketplace for diverse needs.
    Avg. Discounts Across Retailers Pre Black Friday 2024 - Home & Furniture

    Top 3 Products With the Highest Discounts Across Retailers

    To provide a clearer picture of the early Black Friday landscape, we analyzed the top 3 products with the most substantial discounts in consumer electronics and health & beauty categories. These insights highlight how retailers are leveraging strategic discounts on high-value items to attract early shoppers.

    Top Discounted Products in Consumer Electronics

    Premium TVs dominate the discount scene, with LG’s 83″ OLED offering up to 44.5% off on Amazon, closely followed by a 44.4% discount on Best Buy, showcasing aggressive competition. The same product has much lower discounting on Walmart, but notably, the product is retailed at $3999.9, at least $1000 less than other retailers, highlighting Walmart’s commitment to offering lowest prices.

    Products With Highest Discounts Pre Black Friday 2024 - Consumer Electronics - TVs
    Products With Highest Discounts Pre Black Friday 2024 - Consumer Electronics - Playstation
    Products With Highest Discounts Pre Black Friday 2024 - Consumer Electronics - Digital Cameras

    Gaming consoles, like the PlayStation 5 Slim Bundle, show moderate discounts (ranging from 15% on Walmart and Target to 25% at Best Buy), appealing to tech-savvy shoppers.

    Notable competition is evident in price matching across major retailers, particularly in TVs and high-value electronics like the Nikon Z 8 camera, where Walmart offers the deepest discount at 13.75%, edging past Amazon and Best Buy.

    Top Discounted Products in Health & Beauty

    Viral skincare staples like Tatcha’s Water Cream show tight discounting consistency, with Walmart offering 19.47% off compared to Amazon’s 20% and Sephora’s 20.83%.

    Products With Highest Discounts Pre Black Friday 2024 - Health & Beauty - Tatcha Water Cream
    Products With Highest Discounts Pre Black Friday 2024 - Health & Beauty - Olaplex Hair Oil
    Products With Highest Discounts Pre Black Friday 2024 - Health & Beauty - Yves Saint Laurent Satin Lipstick

    Trending haircare brand Olaplex displays greater disparity, with Walmart leading with a 33.33% discount, surpassing Amazon and Sephora. Luxury brand, Yves Saint Laurent’s Satin Lipstick is one of the highest discounted items across retailers.

    Looking Ahead

    Our analysis suggests that while some early deals offer genuine value, particularly in premium beauty and high-end electronics, many retailers might be holding their best discounts for Black Friday.

    For shoppers, the key is being selective: jump on premium brand discounts now (since they’re likely to remain the same though the weekend), but wait on mid-range electronics and home goods where better deals are likely to emerge on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

    For retailers, the imperative is clear: dynamic pricing intelligence is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge while protecting margins. Competitive insights will be critical as the holiday season progresses to balance market share against profitability.

    Stay tuned for our Black Friday Cyber Monday analysis next week, where we’ll track how these early discounts compare to the main event’s deals!

  • Normalizing Size and Color in Fashion Using AI to Power Competitive Price Intelligence

    Normalizing Size and Color in Fashion Using AI to Power Competitive Price Intelligence

    Fashion is as dynamic a market as any—and more competitive than most others. Consumer trends and customer needs are always evolving, making it challenging for fashion and apparel brands to keep up.

    Despite the inherent difficulties fashion and apparel sellers face, this industry is one of the largest grossing markets in the world, estimated at $1.79 trillion in 2024. Global revenue for apparel is expected to grow at an annual rate of about 3.3% over the next four years. That means companies in this space stand to make significant revenue if they can competitively price their products, keep up with the competition, and win customer loyalty with consistent product availability.

    There are three main categories in fashion and apparel. These include:

    • Apparel and clothing (i.e., shirts, pants, dresses, and other apparel)
    • Footwear (i.e., sneakers, sandals, heels, and other products)
    • Accessories (i.e., bags, belts, watches, and so on)

    If you look at all of these product types across all sorts of retailers, there is a massive amount of overlapping data based on product attributes like style and size that are difficult to normalize.

    Fashion Attributes

    Style, color, and size are the main attribute categories in fashion and apparel. Style attributes include things like design, look, and overall aesthetics of the product. They’re very dependent on the actual product category of fashion as well. A shirt might have a slim fit attribute associated with it, whereas a belt might have a length. All these different attributes are usually labeled within a product listing and affect the consumer’s decision-making process:

    • Color (red, blue, sea green, etc.)
    • Pattern (solid, striped, checked, floral, etc.)
    • Material (cotton, polyester, leather, denim, silk, etc.)
    • Fit (regular, slim, relaxed, oversized, tailored, etc.)
    • Type (casual, formal, sporty, vintage, streetwear)

    Color Complexity in Fashion

    Color is perhaps the most visually distinctive attribute in fashion, yet it presents unique challenges for retailers. This is because color naming can vary across retailers and marketplaces. There are several major differences in color convention:

    • A single color can be labeled differently across brands (e.g., “navy,” “midnight blue,” “deep blue”)
    • Seasonal color names (e.g., “summer sage” vs. “forest green”)
    • Marketing-driven names (e.g., “sunset coral” vs. “pale orange”)
    Differences in color naming - challenges faced by fashion retail intelligence systems

    Size: The Other Critical Dimension

    Size in fashion refers to the dimensions or measurements that determine how fashion products fit. Depending on whether the product is a clothing item, shoes, or a hat, there will be different sizing options. Types of sizes include:

    • Standard sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXL)
    • Custom sizes (based on brand, retailer, country, etc.)

    A single type of product may have different sizing labels. For instance, one pants listing may use traditional S, M, L, XL sizing, while another pants listing may use 24, 25, or 26, to refer to the waist measurement.

    Size Variations - challenges faced by fashion retail intelligence systems
    Size Variations - challenges faced by fashion retail intelligence systems
    Size Variations - challenges faced by fashion retail intelligence systems

    Size is a dynamic attribute that changes based on current trends. For example, there has recently been a significant shift towards inclusive sizing. Size inclusivity refers to the practice of selling apparel in a wide range of sizes to accommodate people of all body types. Consumers are more aware of this trend and are demanding a broader range of sizing offerings from the brands they shop from.

    In the US market, in particular, some 67% of American women wear a size 14 or above and may be interested in purchasing plus-size clothing. There is a growing demand in the plus-size market for more options and a wider selection. Many brands are considering expanding their sizes to accommodate more shoppers and tap into this growing revenue channel.

    Pricing Based on Size and Color

    Many fashion products are priced differently based on size and color. Let’s take a look at an example of what this can look like.

    Different colors may retail at different price points.

    A popular beauty brand (see image) is known for its viral lip tint. While most of the color variants are priced at $9.90 on Amazon, a specific colorway option, featuring less pigmented options, is priced at $9.57. This price differential is driven by both material costs and market demand.

    Different colorways (any of a range of combinations of colors in which a style or design is available) of the same product often command different prices also. This is based on:

    • Dye costs (some colors require more expensive processes)
    • Seasonal demand (traditional colors vs. trend colors)
    • Exclusivity (limited edition colors)

    An example of price variations by size is a women’s shirt that is being sold on Amazon as shown below. For this product, there are no style attributes to choose from. The only parameter the shopper has to select is the size they’d like to purchase. They can choose from S to XL. On the top, we can see that the product in size S is ₹389. Below, the size XL version of this same shirt is ₹399. This price increase is correlated to the change in size.

    Different sizes may retail at different price points.
    Different sizes may retail at different price points.

    So why are these same products priced differently? In an analysis of One Six, a plus-size clothing brand, several reasons for this difference in plus-size clothing were determined.

    • Extra material is needed, hence an increase in production costs
    • Extra stitching costs, hence an increase in production costs
    • Production of plus-size clothing often means acquiring specialized machinery
    • Smaller scale production runs for plus-size clothing means these initiatives often don’t benefit from cost savings

    Some sizes are sold more than others, meaning that in-demand sizes for certain apparel can affect pricing as well. Brands want to be able to charge as much as possible for their listing without risking losing a sale to a competitor.

    The Competitive Pricing Challenge: Normalizing Product Attributes Across Competitors in Apparel and Fashion

    There are hundreds of possible attribute permutations for every single apparel product. Some retailers may only sell core sizes and basic colors; some may sell a mix of sizes for multiple style types. Most retailers also sell multiple color variants for all styles they have on catalog. Other retailers may only sell a single, in-demand size of the product. Also, when other retailers are selling the product, it’s unlikely that their naming conventions, color options, style options, and sizing match yours one-for-one.

    In one analysis, it was found that there were 800+ unique values for heel sizes and 1000+ unique values for shirts and tops at a single retailer! If you’re looking to compare prices, the effort involved in setting up and managing lookup tables to identify discrepancies when one retailer uses European sizes and another uses USA sizes, for example, is simply too onerous to contemplate doing. Colors only add to the complexity – as similar colors may have new names in different regions and locations as well!

    Even if you managed to find all the discrepancies between product attributes, you would still need to update them any time a competitor changed a convention.

    Still, monitoring your competitors and strategically pricing your listings is essential to maintain and grow market share. So what do you do? You can’t simply eyeball your competitor’s website to check their pricing and naming conventions. Instead, you need advanced algorithms to scan the entire marketplace, identify individual products being sold, and normalize their data and attributes for analysis.

    Getting Color and Size Level Pricing Intelligence

    With DataWeave, size and color are just two of several dimensions of a product instead of an impossible big data problem for teams. Our product matching engine can easily handle color and sizing complexity via our AI-driven approach combined with human verification.

    This works by using AI built on more than 10 years of product catalog data across thousands of retail websites. It matches common identifiers, like UPC, SKU code, and other attributes for harmonization before employing a large language model (LLM) prompts to normalize color variations and sizing to a single standard.

    The data flow DataWeave uses for product sizing and color normalization

    For example, if a competitor has the smallest size listed as Sm but has your smallest listing identified as S, DataWeave can match those two attributes using AI. Similar classification can be performed on color as well.

    Complex LLM prompts are pre-established so that this process is fast and efficient, taking minutes rather than weeks of manual effort.

    Harmonizing products along with their color and sizing data across different retailers for further analysis has several benefits. Most importantly, product matching helps teams conduct better competitive analysis, allowing them to stay informed about market trends, competitors’ offerings, and how those competitors are pricing various permutations of the same product. It helps ensure that you’re offering the most competitive assortment of sizing in several colors to win more market share as well. Overall, it’s easier for teams to gain insights and exploit their findings when all the data is clean and available at their fingertips.

    Product Matching Size and Color in Apparel and Fashion

    Color and size are crucial attributes for retailers and brands in the apparel and fashion industry. It adds a level of complexity that can’t be overstated. While it’s a necessity to win consumers (more colors and sizes will mean a wider potential reach), the more permutations you add to your listing, the more complicated it will be to track it against your competition. However, This challenge is worth undertaking as long as you have the right solutions at your disposal.

    With a strategy backed by advanced technology to discover identical and similar products across the competitive landscape and normalize their color and sizing attributes, you can ensure that you are competitively pricing your products and offering the best assortment possible. Employing DataWeave’s AI technology to find competitor listings, match products across variants, and track pricing regularly is the way to go.

    Interested in learning more about DataWeave? Click here to get in touch!

  • The Complete Guide to Competitive Pricing Strategies in Retail and E-commerce

    The Complete Guide to Competitive Pricing Strategies in Retail and E-commerce

    Your budget-conscious customers are hunting for value and won’t hesitate to switch brands or shop at other retailers.

    In saturated and fiercely competitive markets, how can you retain customers? And better yet, how can you attract more customers and grow your market share? One thing you can do as a brand or retailer is to set the right prices for your products.

    Competitive or competition-based pricing can help you get there.

    So what exactly is competitive pricing? Let’s dive into this strategy, its advantages and disadvantages, and how it can be used to stay ahead of the competition.

    What is Competitive Pricing?

    Competitive or competition-based pricing is a strategy where brands and retailers set product prices based on what their competitors charge. This method focuses entirely on the market landscape and sets aside the cost of production or consumer demand.

    It is a good pricing model for businesses operating in saturated markets, such as consumer packaged goods (CPGs) or retail.

    Competitive Pricing Models

    Competitive pricing isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy. The approach includes various pricing models that can be customized to fit your business goals and market positioning.

    Here’s a closer look at five of the most common competition-based pricing models:

    Price Skimming

    If you have a new product entering the market, you can initially set a high price. Price skimming allows you to maximize margins when competition is minimal.

    This strategy taps into early adopters’ willingness to pay a premium for new project categories. As competitors enter the market, you can gradually reduce the price to maintain competitiveness.

    Premium Pricing

    Premium pricing lets you position your product as high-quality or luxurious goods.

    When you charge more than your competitors, you’re not just selling a product—you’re selling status and an experience. This strategy is effective when your offering is of superior quality or has unique features that justify a higher price point.

    Price Matching

    Price matching—also known as parity pricing—is a defensive pricing tactic.

    By consistently matching your competitors’ prices, you can retain customers who might otherwise, be tempted to switch to an alternative.

    This approach signals your customers that they don’t need to look elsewhere for what they need and can feel comfortable remaining loyal to your brand.

    Penetration Pricing

    Penetration pricing is when you set a low price for a new product to gain market share quickly. The opposite of price skimming, this strategy can be particularly effective in price-sensitive or highly competitive industries.

    By attracting customers early, you can also deter some competitors from entering the market. This bold move can establish your product as a market leader from the get-go.

    Loss Leader Pricing

    Loss leader pricing is a strategic sacrifice that can lead to greater gains in the long run.

    By offering a product at a low price—sometimes even below cost—you can attract new customers to your brand and strengthen your current customers’ loyalty.

    Eventually, you can cross-sell other higher-margin products to your loyal customer base to cover the loss from your loss leader pricing and increase sales of other more profitable products.

    Key Advantages of Competitive Pricing

    Although it’s not the only pricing strategy available, competitive pricing has some significant advantages.

    It is Responsive

    Agility is synonymous with profit in industries where consumer preferences and market conditions shift rapidly.

    Competitive pricing allows you to adapt quickly—if a competitor lowers their prices, you can respond promptly to maintain your positioning.

    It is Simple to Execute and Manage

    Competitive pricing is straightforward, unlike cost-based pricing, which requires complex calculations and spans various factors and facets.

    By closely monitoring competitors’ prices and adjusting your prices accordingly, you can implement this pricing strategy with relative ease and speed.

    It Can Be Combined with Other Pricing Strategies

    Competitive pricing is not a standalone strategy—it’s a versatile approach that can easily be combined with other pricing strategies. For example, say you want to use competitive pricing without losing money on a product. In this case, you could use cost-plus pricing to determine a base price that you won’t go below, then use competitive pricing as long as the price stays above your base price.

    Key Disadvantages of Competitive Pricing

    While competition-based pricing has its advantages, it’s not without its pitfalls. Here are some potential disadvantages of competitive pricing.

    It De-emphasizes Consumer Demand

    If you focus solely on what competitors are charging, you could overlook consumer demand.

    For example, you could underprice items that consumers could be willing to purchase for more. Or, you might overprice items that consumers perceive as low-value, which can reduce sales.

    You Risk Price Wars

    If you and your competition undercut each other for customer acquisition and loyalty, you will eventually erode profit margins and harm the industry’s overall profitability. It’s a slippery slope where everyone loses in the end.

    There’s Potential for Complacency

    When you base your prices on beating those of competitors, you might neglect to differentiate your offerings through innovation and product improvements. Over time, this can weaken your brand’s position and lead to a loss of market share. Staying competitive means more than just matching prices—it means continuously evolving and adding value for the consumer.

    4 Tips for a Successful Competitive Pricing Strategy in Retail

    Here are four competition-based pricing tips for retailers:

    Retailer Tip #1. Know Where to Position Your Products in the Market

    For competitive pricing to work, you must understand your optimal product positioning in the overall market. To gain this understanding, you must regularly compare your offerings and prices with those of your key competitors, especially for high-demand products.

    Then, you can decide which competition-based pricing model is suitable for you.

    Retailer Tip #2. Price Dynamically

    Dynamic pricing is a tactic with which you automatically adjust prices on your chosen variables, such as market conditions, competitor actions, or consumer demand.

    When it comes to competitive pricing, a dynamic pricing system can track your competitors’ price changes and update yours in lockstep.

    Price-monitoring tools like DataWeave allow you to stay ahead of the game with seasonal and historical pricing trend data.

    Retailer Tip #3. Combine Competitive Pricing with Other Pricing Strategies

    Competitive pricing can be powerful, but it doesn’t have to stand alone. You can enhance its benefits with complementary marketing tactics.

    To illustrate, you can bundle products to offer greater value than what your competitors are offering. You can also leverage loyalty programs to offer exclusive discounts or rewards so customers keep returning, even when your competitors offer them lower prices.

    Retailer Tip #4. Stay in Tune with Consumer Demand

    Competition-based pricing aligns you with your competitor, but don’t lose sight of what your customers want. Routinely test your pricing strategy against consumer behavior to ensure that your prices reflect the actual value of your offerings.

    5 Tips for a Successful Competitive Pricing Strategy for Consumer Brands

    If you’re thinking about how to create a competitive pricing strategy for your brand, consider these five tips:

    Brand Tip #1. Identify Competing Products for Accurate Comparisons

    The first step in competitive pricing is to know the value of what you’re selling and how it compares to that of your competitors’ products. This extends to private-label products, similar but not identical products, and use-case products.

    Product matching ensures your pricing decisions are based on accurate like-for-like comparisons, allowing you to compete effectively.

    Brand Tip #2. Understand Your Product’s Relative Value

    Knowing how your product competes on value is key to setting the right price. If your product offers higher value, price it higher; if it offers less, price it accordingly. This ensures your pricing strategy reflects your product’s market placement.

    Brand Tip #3. Consider Brand Perception

    Even if your product is virtually the same as a competitor’s, your brand’s perceived value may be different, which plays a crucial role in pricing.

    If your brand is perceived as premium, you can justify higher prices. Conversely, if customers perceive you as a value brand, your pricing should reflect affordability.

    Brand Tip #4. Leverage Value-Based Differentiation

    When your prices are similar to competitors’, you must differentiate your products by expressing your product value through branding, packaging, quality, or something else entirely.

    This differentiation will compel consumers to choose your product over other similarly priced options.

    Brand Tip #5. Stay Vigilant with Price Monitoring

    Your competitors will update their pricing repeatedly, and you will, too.

    It can be difficult and time-consuming to monitor your competitive pricing, so you’ll need a system like DataWeave to monitor competitors’ pricing and manage dynamic pricing changes.

    This vigilance ensures your brand remains competitive and relevant in real time.

    4 Essential Capabilities You Need to Implement Successful Competition-Based Pricing

    You’ll need four key capabilities to implement a competitive pricing strategy effectively.

    AI-Driven Product Matching

    Product matching means you’ll compare many products (sometimes tens or hundreds) with varying details across multiple platforms. Accurate product matching at that scale requires AI.

    For instance, AI can identify similar smartphones to yours by analyzing features like screen size and processor type. DataWeave’s AI product matches start with 80–90% matching accuracy, and then human oversight can fine-tune the data for near-perfect matches.

    You can make informed pricing decisions once you know which competing products to base your prices on.

    Accurate and Comprehensive Data

    A successful competition-based pricing strategy depends on high-quality, comprehensive product and pricing data from many retailers and eCommerce marketplaces.

    By tracking prices on large online platforms and niche eCommerce sites across certain regions, you’ll gain a more comprehensive market view, which enables you to make quick and confident price changes.

    Normalized Measurement Units

    Accurate price comparisons are dependent on normalized unit measurements.

    For example, comparing laundry detergent sold in liters to laundry detergent sold in ounces requires converting either or both products to a common base like price-per-liter or price-per-ounce.

    This normalization ensures accurate pricing analysis.

    Timely Actionable Insights

    Timely and actionable pricing insights empower you to make informed pricing decisions.

    With top-tier competitive pricing intelligence systems, you get customized alerts, intuitive dashboards, and detailed reports to help your team quickly act on insights.

    In Conclusion

    Competitive pricing or competition-based pricing is a powerful strategy for businesses navigating crowded markets, but you must balance competitive pricing with your brand’s unique value proposition.

    Competitive pricing should complement innovation and customer-centric strategies, not replace them. To learn more, talk to us today!

  • A Guide to Digital Shelf Metrics for Consumer Brands

    A Guide to Digital Shelf Metrics for Consumer Brands

    Our world is increasingly going online. We work online, socialize online, and shop online every day. As a consumer brand, you need to ensure complete awareness of your brand’s online presence across eCommerce platforms, search engines, and media.

    Only by deeply understanding the customer journey can you ensure that your product is reaching your ideal customers and maximizing your brand’s market share. You need data to intrinsically understand your customer journey and make changes where you’re lacking.

    As the old adage goes: ‘You can’t manage what you don’t measure.’

    You need digital shelf metrics to measure and start benchmarking your buyer’s journey. To find several of these types of key performance indicators (KPIs), you need a digital shelf analytics solution. These platforms allow you to track various metrics along the path to purchase from the awareness stage to the post-purchase phase across the entire internet, helping to inform online and offline sales strategies.

    Digital shelf analytics will help you gain insights into how your brand is doing versus the competition, which areas are lagging behind in historical performance, and what activities are driving sales. There are innumerable ways in which you can leverage these valuable insights. But how do you know which KPIs to start tracking with your digital shelf analytics solution?

    Here, we’ve summarized the top metric types your peers report, track and base their decisions on.

    With these KPIs in hand, consumer brands like yours can ensure that their products are consistently visible and appealing to their target audience across online marketplaces, ultimately enhancing conversion rates, market share, and profitability.

    Read this guide to learn more about the top digital shelf metrics consumer brands are tracking and how to use them in your own strategy.

    1. Share of Search

    Share of Search (SoS) is a KPI in digital shelf analytics that measures how frequently a consumer brand’s products appear in search results on eCommerce platforms relative to the competition for specific keywords. A good digital shelf analytics solution will be able to show this metric across all the top marketplaces and retailers, such as Amazon and Walmart, but also more niche marketplaces for industry-specific selling.

    This metric provides brands with a quantifiable way to measure how frequently their products are being “served up” to customers on online marketplaces. Essentially, it measures visibility and discoverability.

    Share of Search exmple_Digital Shelf Metrics

    With Share of Search on DataWeave, you can slice and dice your data in innumerable ways. These are a few important views you can see:

    • Aggregated SoS
    • Organic and Sponsored SoS scores
    • SoS scores across brands, retailers, keywords, cities
    • Historical SoS score trends

    Once you have benchmarked your SoS and category presence relative to your competition, you need to start interpreting the data. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help interpret your findings:

    Share of Search exmple_Digital Shelf Metrics
    • Which of my key categories have the lowest SoS score?
    • Which products feature low on search results because they are out of stock?
    • Are my competitors’ products faring better due to sponsored searches?
    • Is my SoS low due to poor content quality?

    With insights in hand, you will know which actions to take to drive the biggest impact. For example, you could increase sponsored search results or improve organic reach by optimizing product pages.

    Understanding your SoS is essential to maximizing the awareness phase of your customer journey. It will help you improve your brand visibility and increase product conversions through better search and category presence.

    2. Share of Media

    Share of Media (SoM) is a KPI that is just as impactful, if not more so, than the SoS metric. However, only a limited number of brands track it or use it to drive strategic action. This makes it a perfect opportunity for brands looking to get an edge on the competition.

    But what is SoM in digital shelf analytics? Essentially, it’s a way of measuring retail media advertising activities like brand-sponsored banners, listings, videos, ads, and promotions that sometimes blend into search results. The main types of retail media advertising exist in two categories: banner advertising and sponsored listings.

    Banner advertising involves strategically placing designed banners within websites and search listings. These banners raise brand awareness and drive traffic to online storefronts.

    Sponsored listings are paid placements within search results on search engines or eCommerce platforms. They are prioritized based on the total bid amount and the product’s relevance. These paid listings are marked with “sponsored” or “ad.”

    Sponsored listings on an Amazon webpage

    It’s important to run these types of advertising campaigns on eCommerce platforms to gain customer visibility. In fact, “some 57% of US consumers started their online shopping searches on Amazon as of Q2 2023.” If you aren’t showing up, paying for placement can help.

    These listings serve to enhance your brand’s overall visibility, help you gain more precise reach, increase conversions, and drive better brand awareness and recall with your customers.

    These efforts aren’t free, however, so measuring their effectiveness is critical not only to gain all the listed benefits but to also not waste your valuable marketing budget. The SoM KPI can help a consumer brand answer questions like:

    • Where are the opportunities to increase paid ads?
    • Which categories could benefit from a promotional boost or a strategic and streamlined allocation of ad spend?
    • Which of my competitors have active banners and what is their share of media by keyword?
    • How has my ad spend trended historically in comparison to my competitor?
    Analytics Dashboard on Dataweave

    DataWeave’s digital shelf analytics (DSA) is among the first providers to offer Share of Media KPI tracking and analysis. This is because it requires advanced, multi-modal AI to gather, view, and aggregate listings that encompass text, images, and video. With Share of Media tracking facilitated by DataWeave, consumer brands can track and analyze the effectiveness of their own promotional investments as well as those of their competitors.

    3. Content Quality

    The content quality metric measures how well your product content adheres to the retailer’s specific guidelines, which are in place to steer traffic and sales on their sites.

    With the help of a DSA platform’s AI and ML capabilities, you can measure different elements of your product detail pages (PDPs), such as titles, descriptions, images, videos, and even customer reviews. You need to know which elements are missing, where they are missing, and which ones are negatively affecting sales so you can take corrective action.

    Did you know that the average cart abandonment rate is 69.99%? The quality of your content can significantly impact this number. Ensuring that your content is high-quality will help influence product discoverability, customer engagement, and conversion rates. It will also help position you ahead of the competition. If your content quality is poor, you may find yourself with lower search rankings, a higher return rate, and more abandoned carts.

    Here are some questions you can answer with the help of the content quality digital shelf metric:

    • Is my product content at a retail site exactly what was syndicated?
    • Are there any retailer initiated changes to my product content?
    • Are my product content updates reflected on the retailer platforms?
    • How well does my product content comply with the retailer guidelines?
    • How do I optimize my product content for enhanced discoverability and conversion?

    DataWeave’s content quality digital shelf analysis helps consumer brands ensure that product content on eCommerce platforms is high-quality and benchmark their product listings against the competition. It does this through a combination of AI-driven quality analysis and by presenting brands with actionable recommendations. These optimized suggestions are based on the top-performing products so you can focus your valuable time on the areas that will drive the biggest impact.

    4. Pricing & Promotions

    Your customers can easily shop around to find the best price for the product you’re selling. If your competitor is selling it cheaper, you’ll lose that sale.

    That’s why it’s essential to understand the pricing and promotional landscape for each of your products and categories. This can be a challenge, especially if it’s a common product or comes in multiple pack sizes or variants.

    It’s equally important to track pricing and promotions even at individual, physical stores. Doing so will allow you to remain competitive and responsive to local market dynamics by tailoring your pricing strategies based on regional competition. You don’t want your products to be overpriced (lost sales) or underpriced (lost profit) in specific markets.

    Harmonizing insights when operating an omnichannel consumer brand is extremely difficult without the aid of a digital shelf analytics solution. Insights need to be aggregated between desktop sites, mobile sites, and mobile applications, as well as from physical storefronts.

    Questions you can answer with the help of the pricing & promotions digital shelf metric include:

    • How do my product prices and promotions compare to my competitors?
    • How consistent is my product pricing across retail websites?
    • How does my product pricing vary across regions, ZIPs, and stores?
    • How do price changes influence my sales numbers?
    • Are there regional differences in pricing and promotion effectiveness?

    DataWeave’s digital shelf analytics platform stands out with its sophisticated location-aware capabilities, which enable the aggregation and analysis of localized pricing and promotions. The platform defines locations based on a range of identifiers, such as latitudes and longitudes, regions, states, ZIP codes, or specific store numbers.

    The platform can also extract promotional information, such as credit card-based or volume-based promotions. You can see variances across retailers, split by price groups, brands, and competitors. DataWeave specializes in enabling brands to conduct in-depth analyses across a wide array of attributes so you can answer just about any pricing or promotional question you have.

    Digital shelf pricing insights via Dataweave

    5. Availability

    The availability KPI in digital shelf analytics measures the in-stock and availability rates for a brand’s products across eCommerce and physical locations. Similar to the pricing and promotions metric, it relies heavily on location awareness, down to individual stores. Measuring both online availability and offline in-stock rates will help you understand the big picture and take more informed replenishment action.

    When you start leveraging the availability KPI with the help of digital shelf analytics, you can improve inventory management, boost product discoverability, increase the frequency with which your online product listings convert, and generally drive more sales. This KPI is essential for ensuring your customers can always find and buy the products they want.

    With the availability KPI, you can start answering questions like:

    • What is my overall in-stock rate?
    • Which of my products frequently go out of stock?
    • How does product availability vary across different regions and stores?
    • What is the impact of availability on my conversion rates?
    • Are there any seasonal trends in product availability that I need to address?
    • How quickly are we resolving stockout issues across different locations?
    • What are my biggest opportunities to reduce stockouts?

    DataWeave enables consumer brands to track their product availability metric through automated data collection from various eCommerce platforms in conjunction with physical in-stock rates. The platform provides granular, store-level insights so you can understand regional stock variations and optimize inventory distribution. By tracking historical availability data, you can identify seasonal patterns and predict future demand to pre-empt stockout issues. All of this can be configured with automatic notifications to alert you when there has been a stockout event or when a low stock threshold has been passed, facilitating timely replenishment.

    Graph showing availability across locations

    6. Ratings & Reviews

    The final KPI in our guide is the ratings & reviews digital shelf metric. Consumers rely heavily on genuine feedback from their peers and refer to star ratings, posted comments, and uploaded pictures to inform their buying decisions. This KPI analyzes the impact of customer feedback and reviews on your products’ performance across eCommerce platforms so you can measure overall brand perception and isolate areas of opportunity.

    This metric does something other digital shelf metrics don’t; it can inform your product strategy. It can help you identify repeat complaints that your product team can address with the manufacturer or use for the design of future products.

    Some questions you can answer with this powerful KPI include:

    • What is the overall customer sentiment towards my products based on ratings and reviews?
    • Which product features are frequently mentioned positively or negatively by customers?
    • How do my product ratings and reviews compare to those of my competitors?
    • Are there common issues or complaints that need to be addressed to improve customer satisfaction?
    • Which products have the highest and lowest ratings, and why?

    With DataWeave’s digital ratings and reviews feature, you can keep a pulse on customer sentiment to take short-term action as well as decide long-term strategy. You can leverage reviews to influence product perception, refine products, and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

    DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Metrics

    Each one of these metrics is interconnected and collectively influences a brand’s success. For instance, improving content quality and earning higher ratings can significantly enhance your product’s visibility in search results, thereby boosting the Share of Search digital shelf metric. By focusing on a comprehensive approach that integrates these metrics, brands can ensure their products are consistently visible, competitively priced, well-reviewed, and readily available.

    DataWeave gives consumer brands the means to execute a holistic digital shelf strategy. From a single portal, track and improve digital shelf metrics like Share of Search, Share of Media, Pricing and promotions, Availability, and Ratings and Reviews.

    Our solutions help audit and optimize the most critical KPIs that drive sales and market share for brands so you can stay competitive in a dynamic digital landscape and foster long-term customer satisfaction.

    Ready to get started? Schedule a call with a specialist to see how it can work for your brand.

  • How Digital Shelf Analytics Can Fix Common Revenue Growth Management Challenges for Consumer Brands

    How Digital Shelf Analytics Can Fix Common Revenue Growth Management Challenges for Consumer Brands

    As consumer goods brands increasingly turn to eCommerce marketplaces as a source of profitable growth, it becomes harder for teams to grapple with the complexity of revenue growth management.

    This complexity emerges from multiple fonts: there are hundreds, and even thousands, of competitors to consider when formulating strategies for managing pricing, promotion, and assortment changes. The world is currently experiencing a period of unprecedented supply chain instability, shifting more consumers away from traditional retail and into eCommerce shopping. And finally, consumer buying patterns, preferences, and trends are constantly shifting.

    Revenue growth management (RGM) and net revenue management (NRM) were once less complex processes; but that is no longer the case. Now, some 80% of consumer brand CEOs report that they “aren’t satisfied with their RGM results.”

    Gathering data, analyzing it, and acting on it quickly stand out as major challenges that businesses must overcome to grow their market share, earn more profits, and capitalize on market shifts in real time. In this article, we’ll dive into RGM and NRM, the obstacles business teams face, and explore how using technology for digital shelf analytics can help bridge the gap.

    What is Net Revenue Management (NRM) or Revenue Growth Management (RGM)?

    Every consumer goods company aims to increase profits and grow market share. This requires a concerted effort in RGM and net revenue management (NRM) strategy. Whether a company has a specific team dedicated to this task or relies on the abilities of business analysts or merchandisers, this function is crucial.

    It’s worth mentioning that though the terms NRM and RGM are often used interchangeably, there are subtle differences. While both net revenue management and revenue growth management focus on maximizing overall revenue for the brand, NRM typically has a narrower focus and is specific to optimizing profitability through product pricing, promotion, product mix, and cost management. RGM strategies are a bit broader and tend to look at the top line to grow market share and expand the customer base.

    The Challenges Revenue Teams Face

    Differentiating between ‘good growth’ and ‘bad growth’ is central to NRM and RGM. Net revenue management and revenue growth management teams need the data and tools in place to determine if growth in one area is coming at the expense of another so as not to cannibalize business. Tracking and analyzing extensive data to successfully take action on opportunities and determine whether strategies are working as intended consumes a tremendous amount of mental bandwidth. The fact that these decisions are incredibly time-sensitive only compounds the issue.

    To cope, many teams in charge of NRM or RGM employ digital shelf analytics strategies to help speed up data aggregation and analysis to make sure they’re capitalizing on potential opportunities.

    eCommerce has added a whole new layer of complexity to consumer goods sales. Instead of a few relatively stable prices at big-box stores, a single item for sale may experience high price volatility, with dozens of minute pricing changes occurring online each day. In some cases, consumers become blind to price volatility, letting brands increase prices, but consumer sentiment, the overall price elasticity of the product, and dozens of other factors go into determining the final price of an online product. Net revenue teams need to modernize and adapt to changing eCommerce environments to competitively price, promote, and grow their revenue.

    Here are the top three challenges standing in the way of net revenue management and revenue growth management teams and solutions to address these issues.

    Challenge 1: Incomplete or Inaccurate Data

    Incomplete and inaccurate data are critical for Net Revenue Management and Revenue Growth Management teams to get under control when attempting to modernize in a digital-centric selling environment. As more competitors enter the market, many brands find it hard to make strategic decisions without the complete picture.

    Data may be incomplete or inaccurate because a brand is analyzing only part of the market, such as Amazon or another enterprise-scale eCommerce marketplace. Additionally, they might not be analyzing all types of online media, such as branded ads, sponsored search listings, or sponsored category listings.

    Most importantly, another pitfall is the lack of hyperlocal data. Generalized data across regions, states, ZIPs, and stores can skew the decision-making process and result in poor outcomes.

    Overcoming Incomplete or Inaccurate Data

    In order to get the full picture, consumer brands need to ensure they have a view of the entire competitive landscape across their channels. This includes gathering data down to the case pack, the unique product identifier, and the geography, including ZIP and store. They also need the respective MSRP by SKU, the unit normalized price, and the selling price at a specific moment in time. This is done by aggregating brick-and-mortar store information available online, such as when stores list curbside pickup SKUs and pricing online.

    Individual teams cannot manually gather all this detailed data. The growth in eCommerce means there is simply too much data to find and aggregate. Instead, they can employ digital shelf technology to get more data from more sites. Teams can leverage AI to better match product listings, ads, and even visuals to avoid missing data on listings that lack common attributes, such as UPCs for normalization.

    To add to this, advanced pricing intelligence systems can cache URLs to help teams audit and verify their data, avoiding delays and confusion when ad hoc requests arise.

    Challenge 2: Difficulty in Making Sense of the Competitive Landscape

    Once net revenue management and revenue growth management teams have gathered all of the available data, it’s time to make sense of it. This is a monumental challenge, and ends up being the stage where most NRM and RGM teams flounder. Disparate marketplaces include different product attributes and images. This makes it extremely complicated to sync competitors’ data to ready it for analysis, especially if this analysis is carried out manually in Excel. These are some of the attributes that teams need to harmonize in order to make sense of the competitive landscape:

    • Product identifiers (UPC, SKU, Internal Code)
    • Size, case, pack, volume, bundled offerings
    • Language
    • Currency
    • Stock Status (Whether the product is available or not)
    • Platform-specific attributes such as ‘Amazon’s Choice,’ ‘Best Seller,’ etc.

    Teams also need to group and classify various categories of promotions. These can include sponsored listings, banner ads, coupons, bank offers, and others. Each of these categories needs to be tracked separately. This vast array of data points across hundreds of sites creates a big data problem for teams.

    Making Sense of the Competitive Landscape

    The best way to overcome this challenge is to task a digital shelf analytics system with gathering and harmonizing data automatically across the consumer goods competitive landscape. Competitive and market intelligence tools can help break down an overwhelming amount of data, matching similar products across competing brands and analyzing their various strengths and weaknesses. Once the technology matches complex product attributes and identifiers, it becomes easier for teams to gain insights and exploit findings. In a sense, the data needs to be cleaned before analysis can occur.

    Technology can gather data in multiple ways, and the best systems employ several methods to get the best matches. Data consumption modes include API integrations, CSV and Excel file uploads, and proprietary scrapers that view websites independently of direct inputs. Having all the data in a single place helps net revenue management and revenue growth management teams gain indicative insights on product popularity, pricing, and sales, on their own and competitor products.

    Challenge 3: Lack of Timely Visibility

    The final challenge that many net revenue management and revenue growth management teams face is something of a ‘silent killer’ — timeliness. Even if they successfully gather data across the entire competitive landscape and harmonize that data into a format for easy analysis, a lack of timeliness can render even the best actions irrelevant.

    Speed is of the utmost importance when there are market changes. If a product goes viral and competitors raise prices in response to increased demand, without timely visibility, the trend may be over before a consumer goods brand can successfully increase its prices for the duration of the trend. This can mean lost margins.

    Another example is analyzing data and incorporating lagging promotional and sales data into analyses. This can skew pricing strategies because timely data is not accessible to inform decision-making. Many teams waste time firefighting due to a lack of timely pricing and promotional intelligence data.

    Get Near Real-Time Insights for Faster Decision Making

    Using technology that allows for net revenue management and revenue growth management teams at consumer goods brands to establish update frequencies can be a game changer. Teams can set update frequencies based on their need. They can set up the system to check a fast-moving product daily, while a slow-moving item might only need to be checked weekly, monthly, or even quarterly. This allows teams to focus on the highest-impact products first and address the largest exceptions before they lose out on an opportunity. Managing exceptions with a digital shelf analytics platform saves teams significant time instead of poring over low-impact changes in the data.

    Digital Shelf Analytics for Net Revenue Management

    Modernizing a consumer goods brand’s net revenue management or revenue growth management processes requires advanced digital shelf analytics. DataWeave provides consumer goods companies with the technology they need for quick and accurate pricing, promotional, and assortment intelligence. By tracking over 200 million products each day, users can be sure they get the widest and most timely view of the competitive landscape. DataWeave’s deep industry knowledge is baked into every aspect of its platform.

    Learn more by requesting a demo today!

  • Competitor Price Monitoring in E-commerce: Everything You Need to Know

    Competitor Price Monitoring in E-commerce: Everything You Need to Know

    Picture this: You wake up one morning to discover that your top competitor reduced their prices overnight. And now your shopper traffic has tanked and your sales have taken a hit.

    Unfortunately, this is a common scenario because your customers can compare prices online in seconds—and loyalty lies with the budget.

    So, how can you protect your business? Price monitoring.

    Price monitoring solutions can help you keep abreast of competitor price changes—which, of course, will help you improve your pricing strategies, retain your customers, and maximize your profits.

    How? In this article, we’ll explore:

    • What is price monitoring
    • The key benefits of price monitoring for retailers and brands
    • What a capable price monitoring solution can do

    What Is Price Monitoring?

    Price monitoring is the process of tracking and analyzing your competitor’s prices across various online and offline platforms. By monitoring competitors’ prices, you can understand market price trends and adjust your prices strategically—which, in turn, helps you remain competitive, increase margins, and improve customer retention.

    5 Benefits of Price Monitoring

    Competitor price monitoring can help you:

    1. Gain a competitive edge: Competitor price tracking allows you to adjust your prices to remain attractive to consumers.
    2. Maximize revenue: With timely pricing data, you’re empowered to identify optimum price points that strike a delicate balance between maximizing revenue and maintaining customer loyalty.
    3. Retain customers: Consumers are looking for the most value for their dollar, so maintaining consistently competitive pricing is crucial for retaining loyal customers.
    4. Understand promotional effectiveness: Price monitoring helps businesses evaluate the effectiveness of their promotions and discounts. By comparing the impact of different pricing strategies, businesses can refine their promotional tactics to maximize sales and customer engagement.
    5. Understand market movements: By analyzing historical pricing data, you’re better positioned to anticipate future pricing changes — and adjust your strategies accordingly.

    4 Essential Capabilities of Price Monitoring Software

    Here are four capabilities to look for when choosing a price monitoring system.

    1. AI-Driven Product Matching

    Product matching is the process of identifying identical or similar products across different platforms to ensure accurate price comparisons.

    If your price monitoring solution can’t reliably match your products with competitors’ across various sales channels at scale, you’ll end up with poor data. Inaccurate data will then lead you to make misinformed pricing decisions.

    Product matching needs to be accurate and comprehensive, covering a wide range of products and product variations—even for including private label products.

    For example, AI-driven product matching can recognize a specific brand and model of sneakers across multiple online stores—even if product descriptions and images differ. Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

    • Sophisticated algorithms and deep learning architecture enable AI to identify and match products that aren’t identical but share key characteristics and features.
    • Using unified systems for text and image recognition, the AI matches similar SKUs across hundreds of eCommerce stores and millions of products.
      The AI zeroes in on critical product elements in images, like a t-shirt’s shape, sleeve length, and color.
    • The AI also extracts unique signatures from photos for rapid, efficient identification and grouping across billions of indexed items.

    DataWeave’s AI algorithm can initially match products with 80–90% accuracy. Then, humans can bring contextual judgement and make nuanced decisions that the AI might miss to correct errors quickly and push for accuracy closer to 100%. By integrating AI automation with human validation, you can achieve accurate and reliable product-matching coverage at scale.

    2. Accurate and Comprehensive Data Collection and Aggregation

    The insights you derive are only as good as the data you collect. However, capturing comprehensive pricing data is tough when your competitors operate on multiple platforms.

    For truly effective price monitoring insights, you need consistent, comprehensive, and highly accurate data. This means your chosen price monitoring system should:

    • Scrape data from various sources, such as desktop and mobile sites and mobile applications.
    • Pull data from various online platforms like aggregators, omnichannel retailers, delivery intermediaries, online marketplaces, and more.
    • Handle data from different regions and languages.
    • Collect data at regular intervals to ensure timeliness.

    DataWeave’s online price monitoring software covers all of these bases and more with a fast, automated data source configuration system. It also allows you to painlessly add new data sources to scrape.

    Instead of incomplete or inaccurate data, you’ll have comprehensive and up-to-date data, allowing you to respond quickly to market changes with confidence.

    3. Seamless Normalization of Product Measurement Units

    You can’t compare apples to oranges—or price-per-kilogram to price-per-pound.

    For price monitoring to be accurate, there must be a way to normalize measurement units—so that we’re always comparing price-per-gram to price-per-gram. If we compare prices without taking into account measurement units, our data will be misleading at best.

    Let’s take a closer look. Say that your top competitor sells 12oz cans of beans for $3, and you sell 15oz cans for $3.20. At first glance, your larger cans of beans will appear more expensive—but that’s not true. If we normalize the measurement unit—in this example, an oz—the larger can of beans offers more value to customers.

    Unit of measure normalization facilitates sound price adjustments based on accurate and reliable data. For this reason, every business needs a price tracking tool that can guarantee accurate comparisons by normalizing unit measurements—including weight, volume, and quantity.

    4. Actionable Data and an Intuitive User Experience

    Knowledge is only powerful when applied—and price monitoring insights are only useful when they’re accessible and actionable.

    For this reason, the best price monitoring software doesn’t just provide insights based on accurate and comprehensive data, but it also provides several ways to understand and deploy those insights.

    Ideal price monitoring solutions provide customized pricing alerts, intuitive dashboards, detailed reports, and visuals that are easy to interpret—all tailored to each particular team or a team member’s needs. These features should make it easy for team members to compare prices against those of competitors in specific categories and product groupings.

    Your price tracking tool should also permit flexible API integrations and offer straightforward data export options. This way, you can integrate competitive pricing data with your pricing software, Business Intelligence (BI) tools, or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

    4 Ways Retailers Can Leverage Price Monitoring

    Retailers can use price monitoring tools to remain competitive without compromising profitability—here’s how:

    1. Track Competitors’ Prices

    Competitor price monitoring helps you avoid being undercut—and, as a result, maintain market share. By tracking competitor prices in real-time, you can adjust prices to remain competitive, especially in dynamic markets. Ideally, you should monitor both direct competitors selling the same products and indirect competitors selling similar or alternative products. This way, you’ll have a complete picture of market prices and can make more informed pricing adjustments.

    2. Understand Historical and Seasonal Price Trends

    As a retailer, you may want to analyze historical data to identify price patterns and predict future price movements—especially in relation to holidays and seasonal products. Knowing what’s coming, you’re better positioned to plan for pricing changes and promotional campaigns.

    3. Implement Dynamic Pricing

    Dynamic pricing is the process of adjusting prices based on real-time market conditions, product demand, and competitors’ prices—allowing you to respond faster to market changes to maintain optimized prices.

    4. Optimize Promotional Strategies

    Price monitoring tools can track retail promotions across numerous online and offline sales avenues, providing insight into the nature and timing of competitors’ promotions. This data can help you determine which promotions are most effective—and which aren’t—allowing you to improve your own promotions and discounts, and allocate marketing resources where it matters most. This is especially beneficial during peak sales periods.

    3 Ways Brands Can Employ Price Monitoring

    Here are three ways brands can use price monitoring to remain profitable, protect brand equity, and gain a competitive edge.

    1. Maintain Consistent Retail Prices

    Minimum advertised price (MAP) policies are designed to prevent retailers from devaluing a brand while ensuring fair competition among retailers. Price monitoring applications allow your brand to track retailers’ prices to detect MAP policy violations. Data in hand, you can maintain consistent pricing across online sales channels, physical stores, and retail stores’ digital shelves — and, critically, protect your brand equity.

    2. Improve Product and Brand Positioning

    When you understand how your products’ prices compare to those of competitors, you can set prices to improve brand positioning. For example, if you want to position your brand as luxurious and high-quality, you need to set higher product prices than budget-friendly alternative products.

    3. Ensure Product Availability

    You can use a price monitoring solution to track product availability to ensure products are always in stock, even across different physical stores and online marketplaces. If a product is frequently sold out, you can adjust production levels or help retailers to improve their inventory management.

    Key Takeaways: E-commerce Price Monitoring

    Price monitoring software allows you to compare your products’ prices with competitors. This valuable data can help you:

    • Optimize revenue through timely price changes and dynamic pricing
      Avoid being undercut by competitors
    • Improve pricing strategies and promotions to increase sales and retain customers
    • Maintain consistent prices across sales channels

    To learn more, check out our article, What is Competitive Pricing Intelligence: The Ultimate Guide here or reach out and talk to us today!

  • Cracking the Code: How Retailers Can Adapt to Plummeting Egg Prices in 2024

    Cracking the Code: How Retailers Can Adapt to Plummeting Egg Prices in 2024

    Virtually every cuisine in the world uses eggs. They’re in your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert — which is perhaps why the global egg market is expected to generate $130.70 billion in revenue in 2024 and is projected to grow to approximately $193.56 billion by 2029.

    More specifically, the United States is the fourth-largest egg producer worldwide. The country’s egg market is projected to generate $15.75 billion in 2024 and increase to $22.51 billion by 2029.

    This growth is driven by several factors, most notably:

    • Health-consciousness among consumers: Consumers value eggs for their essential nutrients and rich protein content.
    • Demand for convenience foods: Consumers’ preferences are shifting toward quick and easy foods, which drives demand for shell eggs and pre-packaged boiled or scrambled eggs.
    • Population Growth: A growing worldwide population increases the demand for eggs.
    • Affordability and accessibility: Eggs are an affordable and accessible nutrient-dense food source for many.

    Despite these factors contributing to the U.S. egg market’s growth, recent times have seen egg prices fall dramatically.

    Based on a sample of 450 SKUs, DataWeave discovered that egg prices in the U.S. fell by 6.7% between April 2023 and April 2024, dipping to its lowest (-12.6%) in December 2023.

    Egg Price Chart: Egg Prices USA Going Down 98.95% between April 2023 and April 2024

    So, what’s causing the decrease in egg prices?

    The Rise and Fall of Egg Prices: A Recent History

    In 2022, avian influenza severely impacted the United States. The disease affected wild birds in nearly every state and devastated commercial flocks in approximately half of the country.

    The 2022 incident was the first major outbreak since 2015 and led to the culling of more than 52.6 million birds, mainly poultry, to prevent the disease from spreading uncontrollably.

    With almost 12 million fewer egg-laying hens, the United States produced around 109.5 billion eggs in 2022 — a drop of nearly two billion from the previous year.

    Consequently, the cost of eggs soared, peaking at $4.82 a dozen — more than double the price of eggs in the previous year.

    The avian flu continues to affect egg-laying hens and other poultry birds across the United States. As of April 2024, farms have killed a total of 85 million poultry birds in an attempt to contain the disease.

    Despite the disease’s effects, production facilities have made significant efforts to repopulate flocks, leading to a steady increase in supply – and a much anticipated decrease in egg prices.

    According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was an increase in producer egg prices in 2022, reaching a peak in November 2022, at which point they began to fall.

    Retailer’s egg prices followed suit. The egg price chart below depicts retailers’ declining egg prices over one year, from April 2023 to April 2024, with Giant Eagle showing the most significant price reductions and Walmart the least.

    Egg Price Chart Featuring Leading Retailers 2023-2024

    What Does the Future Hold for Egg Prices?

    The USDA reported recent severe avian flu outbreaks in June 2024. These outbreaks are estimated to have affected 6.23 million birds.

    With a reduction in egg-laying hens, egg prices are likely to increase — time will tell.

    Nonetheless, the annual per capita consumption of eggs in the U.S. is projected to reach 284.4 per person in 2024 from 281.3 per person in 2023. So for now, producers and retailers can rest assured of the growing demand for eggs.

    How Can Retailers Adapt to the Unpredictability of Egg Prices?

    Egg prices were down to $2.69 for a dozen in May 2024. However, they are still significantly higher than consumers were used to just a few years ago—eggs were, on average, $1.46 a dozen in early 2020.

    Additionally, while the avian flu puts pressure on producers, inflation and supply chain disruptions exert pressure on retailers.

    With such challenging egg market conditions, what can retailers do to maintain customer loyalty amid reduced consumer spending while maintaining profitability?

    1. Give the Customer What They Want: Increase Offerings of Organic, Cage-Free, and Free-Range Eggs

    As mentioned, Data Bridge Market Research’s trends and forecast report highlighted a significant increase in consumer health consciousness. Additionally, animal welfare increasingly influences consumers’ purchasing decisions when buying meat and dairy products.

    DataWeave data shows that the prices of organic, cage-free, and free-range eggs—such as those by brands like Happy Eggs and Marketside—have fallen less than those of non-organic, caged egg brands.

    Egg Price Chart Featuring Leading Egg Brand Prices 2023-2024

    2. Increase Private-Label Offerings

    Private labels typically offer retailers higher margins than national brands. These margins can shield consumers from sudden wholesale egg price swings, helping to preserve brand trust and consumer loyalty without sacrificing profitability.

    Moreover, eggs are particularly suited to private labeling, given their uniform appearance and taste and the lack of product innovation opportunities.

    Undoubtedly, this is why sales of private-label eggs dwarf sales of national egg brands in the United States. Statista reports that across three months in 2024, private label egg sales amounted to $1.55 billion U.S. dollars, while the combined sales of the top nine national egg brands totaled just $617.88 million U.S. dollars.

    3. Price Intelligently

    With the current and predicted fluctuations in egg prices over the foreseeable future, price competitiveness is paramount to margin management and customer loyalty.

    This is especially true when lower prices are the primary factor influencing the average consumer’s choice of supermarket for daily essentials purchases.

    AI-driven pricing intelligence tools like DataWeave give retailers valuable highly granular and reliable insights on competitor pricing and market dynamics. In today’s data-motivated environment, these insights are necessary for competitiveness and profitability.

    Final Thoughts

    Egg prices have fluctuated significantly due to the impact of avian flu. Despite recent price drops, future egg price increases are possible due to ongoing outbreaks. Retailers should adapt to unstable egg prices by increasing organic, free-range, cage-free, and private-label egg offerings while leveraging AI-driven pricing tools to maintain margins and customer loyalty.

    Speak to us today to learn more!

  • Cinco de Mayo 2024 Pricing Insights: An Analysis of Discounts Amid Inflation

    Cinco de Mayo 2024 Pricing Insights: An Analysis of Discounts Amid Inflation

    Cinco de Mayo is a vibrant celebration of Mexican-American and Hispanic heritage, marked by lively parades, festive tacos, and refreshing tequila across North America. For the service industry, brands, and retailers, this day offers a golden opportunity to roll out enticing promotions on beloved Mexican foods and beverages, drawing in large crowds and boosting sales.

    Americans love to indulge in Mexican cuisine during Cinco de Mayo. Take avocados, for example: despite inflation, avocado sales soared to 52.3 million units this year, marking a 25% increase from last year, according to the Hass Avocado Board’s 2023 Holiday Report. Such festive events see a significant sales spike, largely driven by appealing discounts and special offers.

    So, what discounts did retailers roll out this Cinco de Mayo?

    At DataWeave, our cutting-edge data aggregation and analysis platform tracked and analyzed the prices and deals on Mexican food and alcohol products offered by leading retailers. Our in-depth analysis sheds light on their pricing competitiveness during Cinco de Mayo, revealing how pricing strategies differed across various subcategories and brands.

    We conducted a similar analysis in 2022, allowing us to compare the prices of identical products this year versus last year. This comparison helps us understand the impact of inflation over the past two years on the prices offered today.

    Our Methodology

    For our analysis, we monitored the average discounts offered by major US retailers on over 2,000 food and beverage products during Cinco de Mayo, as well as in the days leading up to the event. Many retailers kick off their Cinco de Mayo promotions a week before, so we included the entire week leading up to May 5th in our analysis.

    Key Details:

    • Number of SKUs: 2000+
    • Retailers Analyzed: Target, Amazon Fresh, Safeway, Walmart, Total Wines & More, Sam’s Club, Meijer, Kroger
    • Categories: Food, Alcohol
    • Analysis Period: April 28 – May 5

    To truly demonstrate the value of Cinco de Mayo for shoppers, we concentrated on price reductions and additional discounts during the event. By comparing these with regular day discounts, we were able to highlight the genuine savings and benefits that Cinco de Mayo promotions offer to budget-conscious consumers.

    Our Findings

    Safeway led the pack with the highest average additional discount of 4.91%, covering 38.6% of their food inventory for Cinco de Mayo. Total Wine & More followed closely, offering an average discount of 3.46% across 70.8% of its tequila, whiskey, mezcal, and other spirit products during the Cinco de Mayo week.

    In contrast, Target provided minimal additional discounts, averaging just 0.8% over a small fraction (11.6%) of its SKUs. Similarly, Kroger’s additional discounts were also 0.8%, but they were spread across over 60% of its tracked products. Walmart (1.4%) and Amazon Fresh (1.2%) offered relatively conservative discounts during the sale period.

    During Cinco de Mayo, various brands rolled out attractive discounts to entice shoppers. Among beverage brands, The American Plains vodka led the way with the highest average discount of 20.80%. Coffee brands also joined the festivities with significant discounts: Death Wish Coffee at 14.30%, Dunkin’ at 11.10%, and Starbucks at 5.70%. Notably, Dunkin’ and Death Wish Coffee introduced complimentary beverages such as whiskey barrel-aged coffee and spiked coffee products to celebrate the event.

    In the wine category, Erath stood out with a 10% additional discount. However, brands like Jose Cuervo and Franzia offered more modest discounts of 0.70% and 1.80%, respectively.

    Food brands associated with traditional Mexican ingredients or products, such as tortillas, salsas, and spices, provided higher discounts compared to mainstream snack brands. For instance, McCormick (25%), El Monterey (13.3%), and La Tortilla Factory (16.7%)—known for ready-to-eat frozen foods, seasonings, and condiments—delivered the highest discounts. Other notable discounts included Jose Ole (12.5%), a frozen food brand, and Yucatan (8.3%), known for its guacamole.

    Safeway’s private label brand, Signature Select, offered a 5.20% discount. Additionally, Safeway provided deep discounts on brands like Pace, Herdez, and Taco Bell, indicating an aggressive discounting strategy. In contrast, brands closely associated with Mexican or Tex-Mex cuisine, such as Old El Paso, Mission, Rosarita, and La Banderita, offered relatively modest discounts ranging from 0.5% to 3.3%.

    The discount patterns varied between alcohol and food categories, with food brands generally offering higher discounts. This trend may be attributed to pricing being regulated in the alcohol industry. These differing discount levels highlight how brands navigated the balance between driving sales and maintaining profit margins during Cinco de Mayo, particularly in the context of inflation affecting costs.

    Impact of Inflation on Cinco de Mayo Prices (2024 vs 2022)

    To gauge the impact of inflation on popular Cinco de Mayo products, we analyzed the average prices at Walmart and Target between 2022 and 2024. These two retailers were chosen due to their prominence in the retail sector and the robustness of our sample data.

    At Walmart, the Tex Mex category saw the highest average price increase, rising by 22.51%. Other notable subcategories with significant price hikes include Condiments (23.21%), Vegetables/Packaged Vegetables (21.22%), and Lasagne (14.10%). Categories like Dips & Spreads (13.77%), Pantry Staples (14.92%), and Salsa & Dips (8.23%) experienced relatively lower increases.

    At Target, the Snacks subcategory had the steepest average price rise at 27.94%, followed by Meal Essentials (16.07%) and Deli Pre-Pack (8.82%). Categories such as Dairy (0.51%), Frozen Meals/Sides (7.11%), and Adult Beverages (7.41%) saw smaller price increases.

    Brands associated with traditional Mexican or Tex-Mex cuisine faced higher price hikes. Examples include Old El Paso (24.59% at Walmart, 8.70% at Target), Tostitos (35.44% at Walmart, 11.41% at Target), Ortega (30.59% at Walmart, 19.69% at Target), and Rosarita (14.39% at Walmart).

    In contrast, private label or store brands generally experienced lower price increases compared to national brands. For instance, Good & Gather (Target’s private label) saw a 9.55% increase, while Market Pantry (Walmart’s private label) had a 17.27% rise. This trend is understandable as retailers have more control over their costs with private label brands.

    The data clearly indicates that both Walmart and Target have significantly raised prices across various categories and brands, reflecting the broader inflationary environment where the cost of goods and services has been steadily climbing.

    Interestingly, we observed higher price increases at Walmart compared to Target. Although Walmart is renowned for its consumer-friendly pricing strategies, it too had to elevate grocery prices post-2022 to combat inflationary pressures. As consumers become more cost-conscious and reduce spending on discretionary items, Walmart and other retailers are now cutting prices across categories to align with shifting consumer behaviors.

    Mastering Pricing Strategies During Sale Events

    Our pricing analysis for Cinco de Mayo reveals compelling insights into the dynamics of retailer landscapes in the US. It highlights the enduring relevance of private label brands, even amidst fluctuating demand, showing the emergence of local, national, and small players vying for market share.

    As retailers navigate inflationary pressures and evolving consumer behaviors, understanding these pricing dynamics becomes crucial for optimizing strategies and bolstering market competitiveness. This analysis offers actionable intelligence for retailers seeking to navigate the intricate terrain of sale event promotions while addressing shifting consumer preferences and economic challenges.

    Access to reliable and timely pricing data equips retailers and brands with the tools needed to make informed decisions and drive profitable growth in an increasingly competitive environment. To learn more and gain guidance, reach out to us to speak to a DataWeave expert today!