A Modern Day Product Price Matching Strategy

When you are looking to monitor your competitors’ online price one of the biggest problems is accurate product matching.

For each product you want to monitor you need to find the matching product on your competitor sites.

What are the challenges when it comes to online product price matching?

The answer to this question depends on how long you’ve got. The list is almost endless and the challenges limitless. We reckon you’ve already got a good idea of the challenges, but this is how we see it. You’ve got a world full of products, but no uniform means of identification. A product description doesn’t work as not everyone uses the same description. Not every business clearly identifies their products’ GTINs (Global Trade Item Number) or MPNs (Manufacturer Part Number). Prices can vary from store to store, and country to country. Then multiply the problem a billion times and you’ve got the picture.

We know that some companies resort to checking data manually, it’s time consuming, resource intensive and not to mention slow. There are several companies that claim they use algorithms, machine learning and magic if needed but most of these companies are just great marketers.

The only reliable way is to approach this task as a “project”, Price Trakker looks at the data set and the competitors that need to be monitored on a case-by-case basis. There are times when some clever automation can work well for part of the data set such as scraping URL links from Google Shopping and other aggregation sites. However great care must be taken, and automated error checks must be put in place with human intervention too.

At Price Trakker we have embraced all that is good, and which works in existing price matching methods, and eliminated all the bad. Trust us when we say that there was a lot of bad to eliminate!

We understand your needs, and Price Trakker delivers on every count. We work across all categories, all retailers. If you need some evidence of our capabilities, then get in touch we will be more than happy to demonstrate.

Customized Price Comparison

Price Trakker doesn’t work on a ‘one-size-fits-all’ basis but instead tries to encompass all likely scenarios. Often, one of the more-complex situations arises where ‘own brand’ or ‘multi-pack’ offers exist. Our system can be successfully and easily adapted to consider variances which exist between retailers. This flexibility allows for a greater number of comparisons to be made.

Rule-based Price Matching

Rule-based matching allows for the comparison of products with similar functions and/or capabilities, but which are not identical. Rule-based matching means that you can set your own parameters as to how similar functionality and capabilities need to be in order to create a ‘match’. The inclusion of this feature enables you to get a bigger overall picture of the competitive environment of any specific product.

Online Manual Price Matching

There are times when the only way to guarantee a high-quality match rate is to carry out this process manually. This is something that customers should not fear as it acts as a barrier of entry for your customers. Price Trakker has access to a large team that offers this as a service that can be scaled to meet each project.

Only once you have accurate product matching data are you ready for the data to be presented into the Price Trakker dashboard which provides deep analysis on each product with full competitor price history.

To find out more out our services and to request a free trial using your product set please contact us on +44 (0)203 637 3499 or sales@pricetrakker.com