In the retail industry, pricing decisions are usually based on a trade-off between margin and price perception. In order to avoid the so-called “race to the bottom”— trying to constantly beat the competitors' prices — retailers have to make the best decisions when it comes to smart pricing investments.
Pricing in retail still relies heavily on the commercial intuition of pricing managers, spreadsheets put together manually, and other sub-optimal or otherwise outdated techniques. However, in today’s data-rich business environment, retailers can benefit greatly from going beyond these methods, and combining their valuable expertise with data analysis. It is essential to reap the benefits of advanced analytics in order to improve price perception. When done correctly, the implementation of analytics can have a significant impact: a margin boost with steady, or even increasing, sales volume.
of your customers contribute to 60–80% of your sales.
of customers on average are one-time buyers.
of companies fail to deliver the best price.
priority for today’s retailers is building customer lifetime value.
Here are the core challenges that retail businesses may face when it comes to price optimisation:
Nowadays, customer data can take many different forms and comes from many different sources. Finding accurate and reliable data manually can prove increasingly difficult and risky.
The Internet gives equal opportunity to everybody. As a result, the retail segment became extremely competitive, with possibly hundreds of other businesses offering the same products or services to the same target audience. In this climate, being aware of your price positioning is crucial for deciding the right course of action.
Managing prices based on spreadsheets, manual, repetitive tasks or guesswork is often ineffective and very time-consuming. Besides, manual work also carries with it the risk for input errors or inaccuracies.
SYMSON offers businesses many opportunities that
can help to unlock growth in the retail industry:
