A good pricing strategy directly influences your business success. Pricing impacts both your Google rankings and your conversion rates. In fact, 99% of consumers compare prices before making an online purchase, and 58% show greater loyalty to retailers offering discounts. However, the legal landscape surrounding automated price monitoring is becoming increasingly complex, particularly with the introduction of the Descrozaille Law, which limits promotional discounts to 34% for non-food products.
Today, competitive monitoring requires careful navigation through various legal frameworks. Recent changes to robots.txt files on French media websites and the requirements of the GDPR have created a strict regulatory environment for price monitoring. With over 17,000 brands and retailers monitored in real time, understanding the legality of automated price tracking has become essential.
In this article, you’ll discover the full legal framework for automated price monitoring, the potential risks involved, and the compliant methods to conduct effective competitor monitoring while respecting current legislation.
Legal Framework for Price Monitoring in France
In France, the legal framework surrounding the use of automated price monitoring software is based on several regulatory pillars that require close attention to avoid the risk of sanctions.
Laws and Regulations Applicable to Price Monitoring
The fundamental principle in France is that “the prices of goods, products, and services are freely determined by the forces of competition.” This freedom to set prices applies to all businesses, regardless of their legal structure.
As a result, a brand is not allowed to impose a resale price on its distributors in France.
However, this freedom is not absolute. In certain situations, such as monopolies or supply shortages, a decree can regulate prices. The recent Descrozaille Law, which came into force on March 1, 2024, perfectly illustrates this regulation by capping promotional discounts at 34% for non-food products.
For your business, understanding this framework is essential, as all competitive monitoring must operate within this context of supervised pricing freedom.
GDPR Impact on Price Data Collection
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) strictly governs any collection of information, including pricing data, whenever it can be linked to an identifiable person. This framework applies to your organization if it is established in the EU or targets European residents.
When conducting competitive price monitoring, if you collect pricing data linked to accounts with login credentials, you must comply with the following key principles:
- Collect data legally, fairly, and transparently
- Have a legal basis for collection (legitimate interest, consent, etc.)
- Retain data for a limited period (maximum 3 years for prospects)
- Ensure the security of the collected information
Non-compliance can lead to severe penalties, as shown by the €20 million fine imposed on Clearview.
To minimize risk, it is recommended to collect only public data from competitor websites.
Legal Risks of Non-Compliant Price Monitoring
Poorly conducted price monitoring can expose your business to significant legal consequences. The risks involved go far beyond simple warnings and can jeopardize the very sustainability of your operations.
Potential Sanctions for Violations
Administrative fines are the primary penalty for anti-competitive practices related to non-compliant price monitoring.
For companies, these financial penalties can reach up to 10% of their global revenue. This percentage applies to the highest annual revenue recorded during one of the financial years since the illicit practices began.
Beyond financial penalties, the reputational impact on your company can be disastrous. A study revealed that 80% of sanctioned businesses suffer significant reputational damage, affecting their relationships with customers and partners.
To ensure legal price monitoring, it is therefore imperative to strictly follow fair data collection practices and to avoid any behavior that interferes with the free setting of prices through market competition.
How to Conduct Legal and Effective Price Monitoring
To ensure the legality of your automated price monitoring, choosing the right tools and methods is essential. A structured approach will allow you to gather valuable insights without breaking the law.
Choosing Tools that Comply with Regulations, such as Price Observatory
Several legal solutions exist to effectively monitor your competitors’ prices.
Our dynamic pricing software, Price Observatory, tracks over 70 million public prices daily using robots specifically designed for efficient scraping. Its automatic matching technology quickly identifies identical products from your competitors without overloading their servers.
When selecting your tool, you should prioritize solutions that:
- Use ethical data collection methods
- Respect appropriate data extraction frequencies
- Offer GDPR compliance settings
Respectful Configuration Toward Competitor Sites
To conduct legal competitive monitoring, you must adjust your data collection settings. First and foremost, limit the frequency of your requests (ideally based on industry standards) to avoid monopolizing the resources of the monitored sites. Experts recommend spacing out data collections and minimizing the number of requests to the bare minimum.
Additionally, in some cases, you can prioritize alternative techniques to scraping when available (for example, on certain marketplaces): RSS feeds, APIs, or open data sources. These methods ensure simpler and more efficient data retrieval while maintaining the legality of your approach.
Technical and Legal Limits of Automation
Automating price monitoring comes with limitations that are important to understand in order to stay within legal boundaries. These technical and legal constraints strictly govern your price surveillance activities.
Data Collection Frequency and Server Load
The frequency of your price data collection must be carefully calibrated.
Excessive automation can overload the servers of the websites you are visiting. To conduct ethical competitor monitoring, you should adjust your data collection rate according to the characteristics of your industry and the aggressiveness of your competitors.
Some industries require daily monitoring, while others may only need weekly or monthly analyses.
When configuring your tools, keep in mind that:
- Excessive server load may be interpreted as a denial-of-service (DoS) attack
- Your monitoring activities must not impair the performance of competitor websites
- Server capacity must be considered to determine the appropriate collection frequency
Legal Alternatives to Aggressive Scraping Techniques
In light of these restrictions, several legal approaches are available to conduct effective price monitoring. You should prioritize the use of tools that automatically filter out sensitive data while complying with data protection regulations.
To ensure regulatory-compliant monitoring, consider these alternatives:
- Official APIs provided by e-commerce websites
- Publicly available open data feeds
- Formal partnerships with data providers
- GDPR-compliant price monitoring services like Price Observatory
Automated price monitoring requires a careful balance between efficiency and compliance. Legal risks are significant, ranging from substantial fines to criminal penalties. However, legal solutions do exist to carry out high-performing price monitoring.
Ultimately, best practices involve choosing solutions that automate data collection while excluding personal information, ensuring a legal and ethical approach to competitor monitoring. And of course, as a brand, never impose resale prices on your distributors.
Conclusion
On one hand, respecting GDPR and the principle of free price setting forms the foundation of ethical price monitoring. On the other hand, using tools like Price Observatory allows you to gather valuable data without violating the law.
Businesses must therefore prioritize legal data collection methods. This responsible approach not only ensures regulatory compliance but also safeguards the long-term sustainability of your competitive intelligence strategy.