The Six Retail Pillars of Effective Competitor Monitoring

 

From our experience of monitoring 20 million products on 15,000 websites across the globe, we have identified six pillars on which every online retailer can build a solid and effective competitor monitoring strategy.

Price

Price monitoring is a popular and effective strategy for retailers who aim to gain and maintain a competitive advantage. Understanding competitor prices empowers retailers to make the best pricing decisions at the right time.

Retailers that have deeper insight of their competitors assortment portfolio have key competitive advantages. From product launches to discontinued products, smart retailers use this intelligence to stock the right products at the right time.

Promotions are powerful sales drivers and intelligent retailers use competitor promotions insights as a strategy to not only see promotional activity but use the data to accurately forecast their competitors next move and strategise for an advantage.

Inventory monitoring has a huge impact on sales and provides competitive advantages for savvy online retailers especially when a competitor runs out of stock on key in demand products that consumers would happily pay a premium for.

Intelligent retailers use product reviews to gauge consumer opinions on specific products or product ranges and use this insight to influence decisions around inventory purchases that help them achieve their sales volume and profit margin targets.

Media monitoring offers a number of potential opportunities for savvy online retailers. They use positive competitor reviews to find improvements for competitive advantage and negative reviews to communicate their competitive advantage.