Price Tracking for Businesses

Price is one of the 5 P’s (Product, Price, Promotion, People and Place) that make up the marketing mix. Each of these elements is a contributing factor to ensuring that a business is strategically placed in the market, and has a competitive advantage.

Competing on price is one of the most lucrative strategies for a business as it is constantly being changed and updated. Price changes can occur in a matter of minutes, which makes it an increasingly difficult factor to compete in, especially if you are a small business. However, being equipped with the right price tracking tools ensures that you are up to date on the ever-changing prices in your market.

Price tracking is usually set up within specific industries where a company's' product or service is similar. For example, in the airline industry, travel agents use price-tracking websites to become aware of any price drops in airfares, so they can give their customers the best deal.

Price Tracking for Consumers

From a buyer’s point of view, price tracking websites are helpful for them to be well informed of their choices. These websites can be used to compare when specific retailers have reduced their prices compared to their competitor, allowing the consumer to see where the product or service is the cheapest, at that point in time.

Consumers commonly use price tracking on fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), and grocery basket price comparisons are often used to give the consumer insight as to where best to shop. Small savings and awareness on price differences - between the retailers on the same products - give the consumers the feeling of control over their purchasing decisions.

What is a price tracking tool?

Price tracking tools can come in the form of an application, a web extension, a website and even separate software. The most popular products that are price tracked include FMCG’s, electronics, flights and groceries.

Prices are constantly fluctuating, and if your business operates in a price sensitive market, having the ability to get real-time price change data can be beneficial for you to keep your competitive edge, as you can respond quickly to the increase or decrease in your competitors' pricing.

A leading price tracking website provider for businesses, Assosia, talks about the benefits of using price tracking.

Eliminates human error

Traditionally, organisations would use Excel to track and store competitors' prices manually. However, manually tracking is only realistic if your company has less than 50 products. Trying to track more than 50 becomes increasingly more difficult as you run the risk of making mistakes with inputting and transferring the data. By using an effective price tracking tool, the risk of human error is eliminated, which helps to avoid costly mistakes.

Saves Time and Money

Time is money. By digitalising your price tracking process, you can shift focus on other areas of your business and increase productivity. If your company has hundreds and even thousands of products, it is not advisable to have an employee spend all their time conducting price comparisons with your competitors. Not only is this not a good way for them to spend their time, but in the long run it is more expensive as paying for their time is more costly than paying for a software or website subscription. Digital price tracking tools are substantially more effective, more economical and more accurate.

Faster response time to price changes

Price wars between competitors involve a combination of different elements including promotions, discounts and sales. If price tracking was conducted manually, you would be overwhelmed by the constant changes in data; this also makes the job virtually impossible to update daily. Using a digital platform to monitor prices gives you the ability to customise the alerts to your specification, meaning your response/adjustment time is significantly faster.

More efficient data analysis

By investing in digital price tracking tools, you will have greater insight into critical pieces of data which may help improve your overall pricing strategy. The price-tracking tool will be able to display key information such as; product life cycle, projected future pricing trends, whether you should adopt seasonal or regular price changes, and whether your discounts and promotions are effective and appropriate. You can monitor competitor activity, and it becomes easier to make business decisions as you are basing it on real-time data, and reducing the risk of uncertainty.

Conclusion

If a consumer sees that your business has a higher retail price - on the specific product they want to buy - compared to a competitor, they are less inclined to stick to your company and more likely to leave your website altogether. Their thought process may include a generalisation that your prices are higher for everything in your range – although this is not always the case. Therefore using a price-tracking website will help keep the bounce rate at a minimum and ensure that you remain at a competitive advantage.

Using digital price tracking tools is an adaptive strategy that helps your business grow. In a nutshell, you are improving the productivity of employees, efficiency of monitoring price changes and the effectivity of your price making decisions.

Author Bio: Joemar Carillo is a content writer for Assosia. She has written for a variety of sites on technology, business, and marketing.