Legality of Automated Price Monitoring: What Businesses Need to Know

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.

legalité veille tarifaire

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:

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:

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.

légalité veille tarifaire

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:

légalité veille tarifaire

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:

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.

Contact us for a demo or more information!

The impact of seasonality on prices and how price intelligence helps to anticipate these variations

The impact of seasonality on pricing is a major challenge for businesses, especially when you consider that half of the promotions do not generate any increase in sales.

This is because a successful business relies heavily on the balance between pricing, promotions, and inventory management. Thus, price monitoring becomes an essential tool for anticipating and adapting to seasonal variations.

This approach not only optimizes your prices according to market demand, but also improves your competitive positioning.

In this guide, you'll learn how to effectively use price intelligence to anticipate seasonal variations and optimize your pricing strategy. We go through the essential tools as well as best practices to monitor prices effectively.

Understanding Seasonal Rate Watch

Seasonal price monitoring is a permanent price monitoring system that takes into account periodic market fluctuations. This methodical approach allows companies to analyze and anticipate price changes throughout the year.

In addition to being able to track competitors' prices, this marketing technique also allows you to control the pricing applied by distributors to their own products.

The main objectives of this approach are multiple:

The different types of seasonal variations

Seasonal variations occur in  a predictable and cyclical manner, affecting each industry differently.

These fluctuations are characterized by several distinct components:

To measure these variations and adjust their pricing strategies accordingly, companies use the seasonal coefficient, which is obtained by comparing the average sales of a period to the theoretical average of the quarters or months of the year.

More specifically, this analysis makes it possible to:

Impact of seasonality on prices

Seasonal price variations affect many industries, creating predictable cycles that directly influence business strategies. The magnitude and nature of seasonal variations depend on several sectoral factors.

In tourism and hospitality, prices soar in summer for seaside resorts and in winter for ski resorts. Property prices  rise systematically in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, with a more marked increase for houses than for apartments. Seasonalrentals, on the other hand, are subject to strong fluctuations in cities dependent on seasonality such as Cannes or Megève.

Agriculture and agri-food see  their prices change according to harvests and weather conditions, while the energy sector sees price increases in winter for gas and in summer for electricity, in response to heating and cooling needs.

As far as the retail trade is concerned, according to INSEE, toy sales generally increase significantly between November and December due to the end-of-year celebrations. Some products, on the other hand, such as winter clothing, have big discounts out of season. These variations may also differ between countries and economies, depending on the relative weight of sectors of activity in their economic structure. The health crisis has also changed certain traditional seasonalities, particularly in the transport and tourism sectors.


Essential tools for price intelligence

To meet the challenges of price seasonality, professionals now have sophisticated tools at their disposal for precise market monitoring.

Price tracking software

Among the most useful are price tracking software. These modern price intelligence solutions automate data collection and analysis.

Price Observatory is among the best competitive intelligence software. It extracts prices, promotions and stocks from competing sites on a daily basis and allows real-time monitoring of prices on all their merchant sites.

This type of pricing tool offers several essential features:

analyse par produit jouets


Competitive intelligence tables

The competitive intelligence board is another price tracking tool that offers clear visualizations of price positioning across different charts and curves. In particular, it allows you to:

The frequency of surveys can be adjusted according to seasonal needs. For example, once a month in low season and once a week in high season. Custom alerts can also be set up to flag significant price changes at competitors.

To maximize their effectiveness, it is essential to choose your competitive intelligence tools carefully and integrate them with your existing management systems. Thus, price intelligence data can be directly connected to ERP, CRM or quoting software. This interconnection makes it possible to automate price adjustments and improve responsiveness to market variations.matiser les ajustements de prix et d'améliorer la réactivité face aux variations du marché.

Implement an effective strategy

An effective price monitoring strategy requires a methodical approach and the right tools to anticipate seasonal price variations.

The first step is to precisely identify your key competitors and products to look out for. Modern tools make it possible to track thousands of brands and retailers simultaneously.

To obtain relevant results, it is essential to compare similar elements:


Choosing the right metrics

Four main indicators can be used to optimise your price monitoring:

This is because analyzing historical pricing data helps identify trends and predict future price fluctuations.

In addition, the monitoring of raw material and logistics costs has a direct influence on the pricing strategy. This approach is essential to ensure effective business intelligence .esoins and its internal resources to take full advantage of competitive data.

Automate data collection

Automation is an essential element for effective monitoring. A price tracking tool analyzes product pages in real time and automatically matches SKUs.

This automation is based on:

To ensure the reliability of the data, a similarity score is calculated for each match. This approach provides accurate, real-time analysis of the market, while preserving margins.

The implementation of an effective price watch also requires cross-referencing price data with quantitative (stock, distribution) and qualitative (customer reviews, merchandising) aspects. This global approach allows you to adjust your pricing strategy in a more relevant way in the face of seasonal variations.es.

Conclusion

Price monitoring is a real strategic tool in the face of seasonal price variations.

The data shows that companies that incorporate a seasonal coefficient calculation into their strategy benefit from better anticipation of market fluctuations while maintaining their competitiveness.

Modern price intelligence tools, such as competitive intelligence software and competitive intelligence tables, combined with a rigorous methodology, offer concrete solutions to manage these variations.

The success of a price intelligence strategy is ultimately based on three essential pillars: the precise definition of the monitoring perimeter, the judicious choice of indicators and the automation of processes.

Discover Price Observatory, the price monitoring software that allows you to monitor your competitors in real time, analyze market trends and adjust your prices optimally! Thus, you will ensure effective commercial monitoring by adapting to seasonal cycles while preserving your margins.


Competitive intelligence: the challenge of matching private labels and equivalent references

In a competitive business environment, the ability of retailers and brands to monitor and adjust their prices quickly has become a major strategic lever. This monitoring of competition is no longer limited to the simple observation of the prices charged by competitors, it now involves in-depth work on the matching between private labels (private labels) and equivalent products. This step is necessary for retailers looking to maintain their competitiveness and margin, adjust their pricing strategy and capture the attention of consumers, who are increasingly aware of price differences.


The challenge for retailers: the matching of private labels

In many areas, retailers are increasingly developing their own private labels to offer competitive alternatives to big brands. In sectors such as toys, for example, where each distributor offers its own references in addition to those of historical brands, it becomes complicated to make a direct comparison between similar products. This complexity lies mainly in the differences in coding: each private label product has its own EAN code, its own name and a separate title, even if, in essence, the product is identical.




To ensure effective competitive intelligence, distributors must be able to compare equivalent products and adjust their prices accordingly. And the real challenge lies in the ability to automatically match disparate SKUs, an essential step in applying rapid repricing strategies without having to go through tedious and lengthy manual operations. And without this correspondence work, retailers miss out on opportunities for alignment or price differentiation with their competitors.

Traditional tools struggle to meet this challenge, as they often rely on matches based solely on EAN codes. Fortunately, there are now advanced price monitoring solutions, powered by artificial intelligence, capable of analyzing product characteristics (dimensions, materials, ingredients, features, etc.) to suggest likely matches. For example, in the cosmetics sector, two beauty creams of different brands, but sharing similar characteristics (capacity, ingredients, fragrance, etc.) can be considered equivalent despite having different EAN codes. And this ability to identify matches will directly influence the repricing strategy. Without this, distributors risk either undervaluing their prices, losing margins, or overvaluing their products, at the risk of losing competitiveness. In addition, promotions and commercial actions require constant monitoring of the prices of equivalent products to maximize their impact.


analyse par produit jouets


The challenge for brands: comparing equivalent references

For brands, the challenge of matching is just as strategic. Identifying equivalent competing products allows you to adjust your price positioning and react quickly to market movements. However, this approach presents its own challenges: determining which products are actually comparable often relies on the end customer's perception. Brands must evaluate the similarity of products according to their own criteria and their knowledge of the customer, a time-consuming and subjective process.

Brands must also take into account the specific criteria of the market. For example, in industries where the brand is of little importance (such as office supplies), consumers mainly compare prices. Conversely, in sectors where brand image is essential (cosmetics, fashion), matching must be more refined, taking into account the notoriety, perceived quality and positioning of competing brands.

As with retailers, repricing solutions can offer brands artificial intelligence algorithms that can automatically submit product matches. These systems analyze various criteria (brands may have more or less latitude on the choice of these criteria upstream) such as technical characteristics, ingredients and uses to generate relevant suggestions. These proposals are then submitted to the client, who can validate or adjust them according to their needs.

Let's take a concrete example with office supplies: for a basic product such as a roll of brown "moving" tape, the end customer is often indifferent to the brand and focuses on the price. Brands must therefore monitor their direct competitors, but also all equivalent products (roll size, weight, packaging, etc.) to remain competitive. By adopting high-performance matching tools, brands can refine their competitive intelligence strategy, detect positioning opportunities and adjust their prices in a more dynamic and responsive way.



The different methods of reference matching

There are several approaches to matching equivalent references. Here are the main ones:

  1. Manual with Excel :
    • The customer creates an Excel table in which he manually fills in all the correspondences between these products via the EAN codes. This method offers full control but is time-consuming and error-prone.
  2. Manual in the repricing application :
    • The customer performs the matching directly in the repricing application. In case of no EAN code, it can copy/paste the URL of the equivalent product, the algorithms of the solution will take care of the rest. This method is more flexible but remains largely manual.
  3. Semi-automatic :
    • Repricing tools equipped with AI algorithms generate matching suggestions. The customer then has a validation interface where he can accept or correct the proposed matches. This system lightens the workload while maintaining human control.
  4. 100% supported :
    • Price Observatory offers full support for the process. The algorithms suggest matches, which Price Observatory's teams validate based on the information provided by the customer. This method completely frees the customer from the operational process while ensuring reliable results.

The matching of private labels and equivalent references is an essential pillar in competitive intelligence and repricing strategies. Whether for retailers or brands, the precise identification of competing products allows them to refine pricing strategies and optimize their competitiveness in the market. Between still manual methods and fully automated solutions, each professional must place the cursor in the best possible way, taking into account his budget, his needs and his internal resources to take full advantage of competitive data.


Control your distribution and optimize your prices: towards an omnichannel strategy

Mastering omnichannel distribution, both online and in-store, is a strategic challenge for all brands. This is how they can preserve their brand image, create a quality shopping experience and, ultimately, increase their sales. To meet this challenge in the age of omnichannel, these brands must be able to collect reliable and usable data at all levels of contact: in stores, on reseller sites, search engines or price comparison sites. It is now an essential point in their marketing strategies in order to quickly identify areas for improvement and make the right strategic decisions.

Control your distribution at the point of sale

Brands know it well: linear readings are essential to optimize in-store performance, carefully monitor stock, traffic, merchandising, layout and pricing. In particular, they allow sales managers and brand managers to identify areas for improvement to satisfy customers and refine strategies. The integration of technologies such as mobile apps, AI and IoT (Internet of Things), combined with standardized training and collection procedures, make these audits more efficient than in the past, with 100% manual linear readings being particularly tedious. This helps build a data-driven culture that supports operational excellence and continuous improvement.

Mastering your digital distribution and digital shelf

Mastering the Digital Shelf, the online equivalent of in-store shelves, has become essential for brands looking to optimize their online visibility and attractiveness. Online intelligence plays a key role in monitoring pricing, availability, promotions, and product presentation, allowing brands to stay competitive and adjust their strategy in real-time against competitors. With specialized tools like Price Observatory, they can keep up with market trends and improve their digital positioning.

Harmonize physical and digital strategies

The control of distribution therefore requires omnichannelity. It represents a strategic approach to unify the customer experience by harmonizing physical and digital channels. This approach therefore consists of creating a synergy between the different points of contact with the consumer, whether it is a physical store, a website, a mobile application or social networks. The goal is to provide a seamless and personalized customer experience, where information and actions taken on one channel are recognized and acted upon on all others. By offering a unified view of the customer relationship, omnichannel improves customer satisfaction, strengthens loyalty and optimizes sales performance.

What solutions can be found to meet the challenge of omnichannel distribution?

The importance of in-store and online shelf surveys and thus having a 360° view is now obvious. But what solutions can be adopted to simplify this time-consuming data collection which, if done poorly, is a source of errors? To optimize this process, solutions such as Easy picky and Price Observatory are particularly effective. Easy picky Automates Shelf readings in stores thanks to scanning tools embedding an Image Recognition solution, which works simply by activating the camera of a smartphone or tablet and walking through the aisles of a store. Price Observatory ensures a Comprehensive online monitoring. It records prices, stocks, catalogues, images used, customer reviews and product ratings in real time. It monitors the greymarket, buy box holdings on marketplaces, market trends and competing products. The solution makes it possible, thanks to high-performance product matching algorithms, to monitor price changes in real time in order to better advise retailers in their online sales and pricing strategy while maintaining a good brand image.  By combining these two tools, brands benefit from a reliable and up-to-date source of data in real time, allowing them to make informed decisions and strengthen their competitiveness both online and in-store.

Omnichannel distribution


How EasyPicky simplifies field data collection for Henkel

The sales forces of Henkel Home Care division were responsible for manually filling out large Excel spreadsheets during field surveys, which was tedious, time-consuming, error-prone and could only be done a few times a year. Negotiations with department managers were hampered by the lack of KPIs, affecting the quality and effectiveness of discussions. Sales and marketing departments had a limited vision of the field, only receiving ad hoc data during survey campaigns, which made it difficult to accurately evaluate strategies. EasyPicky has revolutionized the collection and analysis of field data for Henkel's sales force. Thanks to its Image Recognition solution, they can take exhaustive readings at each visit, simply by activating the camera of a tablet, even in 100% offline mode.

Industry leaders now benefit from instant analysis of the data collected, strengthening their negotiating power with customers with reliable and measurable information in real time. Sales and marketing departments also have immediate access to field data, automatically consolidated in Henkel's CRM, giving them a clear and constantly updated view of point-of-sale performance to quickly adjust sales and marketing strategies.

The Sucess Story Henkel & Easypicky



How Price Observatory provides Schneider Electric with clear visibility into the prices of its dealers and competitors

Schneider Electric is a multinational company with several divisions and an operational structure for each country. During the CoVID crisis, the BtoC division experienced very strong growth due to the rise of the Do It Yourself trend among consumers. Their sales to individuals, via e-tailers and specialist stores have increased sharply and Schneider Electric needed reliable information on online prices. However, the group was, at the time, totally blind on this point. With Price Observatory, they now have clear visibility into the pricing of their resellers and competitors, allowing them to make informed decisions about their own pricing. Data scrolling data guides countries in setting their prices, so that everyone knows how to adapt the price structure to the specificity of the country. Price Observatory's solution also guides countries on the Go To Market, as products are marketed through several distribution channels: B to B and B to C (including e-commerce).

The Sucess Story Schneider Electric & Price Observatory




Omnichannel distribution


Towards a 360° vision

The rise of omnichannel distribution and the increasing complexity of consumer touchpoints require new strategies and data collection tools to ensure optimal visibility and competitiveness. Solutions such as EasyPicky and Price Observatory provide brands with concrete answers to these challenges, by facilitating field surveys and offering real-time 360° online monitoring. Thanks to these solutions, brands now have a complete and accurate view of their performance, allowing them to adjust their strategies in a reactive manner and optimize their brand image and sales.

Brands: how to better control your Digital Shelf with online monitoring?


What is the Digital Shelf?

The Digital Shelf is the online equivalent of the shelves in physical stores.

It's the place where customers search, discover and buy products online, whether it's on the retailer's website or mobile app, or on another retailer's website or marketplace.

Just like in a physical store, customers want to be able to access well-stocked shelves, while remaining clear and organized enough, and have the information they need to make a purchase with confidence.

The digital shelf should allow customers to search for information about a product.  Search results pages and product category pages are entry points for online customers and should contain a lot of information: images, videos, description, pricing, availability, variants and options, ratings, and customer reviews. The pages of each product should also provide all these information.

Supermarkets and brick-and-mortar stores have mastered the art of creating a quality in-store shopping experience. Thanks to merchandising, they know how to create attractive window displays, highlight leader products or promotions aisle head display offers, arrange the shelves in such a way as to highlight products with higher margins, offer a fluid in-store experience to the consumer and encourage them to buy by creating pre-defined universes and consumer journeys. They also offer impulse purchases near the checkouts, and offer immediate assistance on the shelves thanks to salespeople who are available for any questions.

Online, customers are looking for a similar experience: they want to easily find the product they are looking for using categories, keywords, etc., to get detailed information about each product, to have access to useful usage tips, recommendations and reviews from other consumers to be reassured about their choice, they also want to be directed to other similar products or additonal ...

digital shelf et veille en ligne


The Digital Shelf: more and more points of contact

The digital shelf include all the touchpoints that consumers use to research, evaluate, and compare a product with other brands, and then make a purchase. With the development of digital technology, these touchpoints are multiplying, making the consumer buying journey increasingly complex. To manage this digital space well, it is crucial to ensure that products are easy to find, well presented, and accompanied by all the necessary information to encourage purchase.

digital shelf et veille en ligne





Online monitoring, an essential tool for mastering your
digital shelf

Online monitoring consists of systematically monitoring how your products are presented on your retailers' sites, on marketplaces and on the sites of other unknown retailers. This includes price monitoring (tracking prices, promotions, price changes), the way your SKUs are presented on product sheets (images used, description, presentation) as well as monitoring market trends, monitoring competitor SKUs, customer reviews and ratings on your products, and the promotional activities of other brands. The goal is to collect relevant data to adjust your online distribution strategy and stay competitive.

Online monitoring is particularly important for:

For effective price intelligence, companies use price intelligence software such as Price Observatory that aggregates this data in real time via scraping technologies and APIs to extract data directly from competing websites.

Competitive intelligence is not limited to price monitoring, other factors are also important to master your Digital Shelf.

veille en ligne

Essential online monitoring tools to master your Digital Shelf

To carry out effective online monitoring, brands can use various technological tools:

Putting it into practice

digital shelf


Conclusion

Mastering your Digital Shelf is essential for brands that want to succeed in today's competitive digital landscape. Online intelligence provides an effective way to monitor and optimize the various aspects of the digital presence of products. By taking a proactive approach and using the right tools, brands can improve their visibility, attract more customers, and ultimately increase sales. For personalized advice on the pricing of your products, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts on Price Observatory website. Contact us for a demo, a real-world test or information

Repricing and sales: the winning duo to boost your incomes!

Repricing and sales: the winning duo to boost your incomes!

While the summer and winter sales represent an opportunity for e-merchants (liquidation of stock, development of visibility, capture of new customers, etc.), consumers, who are increasingly used to discounts, are difficult to attract.

In this context, prices represent the most important lever of competitiveness for brands and e-retailers. It is therefore essential to develop a well-studied and coherent strategy... which must take into account increasingly demanding legislation.

In particular with the Omnibus Law, officially the European Directive 2019/2161, which aims to improve consumer protection in the digital environment. In the context of sales, the Omnibus Directive makes it mandatory, in addition to the updated price, to display the reference price, i.e. the lowest price offered in the last 30 days. The aim here is to allow customers to know the actual discount. E-merchants must therefore succeed in finding the difficult balance between attractive prices, compliance with legislation and safeguarding margins.

The Price War

For a given product during the sales period, what is the best price? How are competitors positioned? How is their pricing strategy evolving? To get an idea of the complexity of the answer, you should know that on the Amazon marketplace, and for some products, especially if several merchants sell them, hundreds of price changes can occur daily!

It is therefore absolutely impossible today to organize a price watch worthy of the name without automation and a repricing tool. Monitoring all identified competitors' sites to find prices and define dynamic, rule-based pricing that will allow for "repricing" (i.e. setting new, more competitive prices) has become essential.

The repricing tool will therefore allow you to define your own rules: which competitors I want to compare myself to, should I include promotions, shipping costs, the entire brand or only certain products, etc. It will also be used to choose the triggers: is the competitor x euros more expensive, if so what is the reprice (alignment at the same price or 1 euro cheaper, for example) and what is the expected level of margin. Repricing can be validated manually or automated, the prices are then updated via an API. Finally, it should be noted that this strategy can be multichannel, i.e. different prices can be set on different sites or marketplaces, and change several times a day during the sales period.

Margin protection

A repricing tool is not only for getting the lowest price. It must also be able to be used to increase margins. In this case, the tool may not offer to decrease, but to increase the prices. Indeed, there is no point in being much cheaper than your competitors, you just have to be the cheapest. For example, if, for a given product, the nearest competitor is 4 euros more expensive, the reprice offered can be + 3 euros, to keep a gap of 1 euro. This allows you to maintain your position as the cheapest seller while increasing your margin.

What's more, an efficient repricing tool must offer clear and complete dashboards, in order to support a BI (Business Intelligence) approach. All the data collected (prices, promotions, stocks, histories, etc.) can thus be transcribed in the form of graphs (ideally with multi-country and multi-currency possibilities). This will ultimately make it possible to know precisely the trends through the desired prism, and to make the right choices at the right time.

Good practices

Even with the best repricing tool on the market, it will be difficult to be the best during the sales without the application of a few best practices and a little common sense, so the adaptation of the homepage and product sheets should not be forgotten. As physical stores adapt their merchandising during sales periods, e-merchants must adapt their site to convert better.

Communication is also an important lever during this period. Whether it is a question of interacting with potential new customers or with the installed customer base, communication can, in addition to being set up on the site, be developed on more communication channels (emailing, SMS, social networks, etc.). Finally, we must not forget SEA (for Search Engine Advertising), which consists of paying to display targeted ads on the search results of Google and Bing (among others). Indeed, it is a good time to create SEA campaigns, carried out on products known to be the most sought-after during the sales.

An accurate and reliable repricing with Price Observatory

During the sales, Price Observatory meets the price monitoring needs of companies of all sizes and industries, and allows brands and e-tailers to monitor resellers' prices, analyze the market and the distribution network. Users of the solution can therefore easily carry out competitive intelligence, price positioning monitoring and automatic repricing.

No more drudgery of product reconciliations: as many references as possible are automatically matched by our algorithms. Just send us the product feeds and Price Observatory will take care of the rest.

Thanks to a precise repricing strategy, our solution also optimizes your margin by identifying in real time which offers are becoming cheaper than yours, and which products you can increase prices on.

In addition, with a current price history of 2 years, it is the guarantee of having all the data to be in compliance with the Omnibus Directive.

Finally, Price Observatory is agile, adapts to all types of companies and can be customized according to needs. And for companies that are just starting out in the field of repricing, Price Observatory ensures the implementation of support measures, to acculturate and promulgate good practices.

For personalized advice on the pricing of your products, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts on our Price Observatory website.

Contact us for a demo, a real-world test or information

How can Pricing become a Key Success Factor for your e-commerce?


How did we do it before the internet?

You walk into your favorite store, take a brief look at the displays, touch a few items to feel the texture. Suddenly, you find your crush, grab it, try it on to see if it suits you well. You love the item, the only thing that separates you from it is the price tag. You return it and check how much the item is worth. Ouch! It's expensive. It's not a good deal... So you give up on this purchase and leave the store disappointed. Sounds like a very old story, doesn't it ?


What the internet has changed in our purchasing behaviors

Today, we follow our favorite brands on Instagram, Tik Tok... we spot a product and find out where it is sold in seconds.

For the same product, we have an infinite number of purchasing options : e-merchants, marketplaces that sell identical products at different prices.

Google's consumer barometer below shows how much time is spent researching a product online before a purchase decision is made.

As you can see from this chart, for only 21% of online purchases, consumers started their research right before that purchase. For all other online purchases, the search started hours, days, or even months before the act of purchase!



Price, a key factor in the purchase decision

So how many products and prices do you think a consumer sees before landing on your website and buying something? Hundreds to thousands on average.

Let's look at some statistics:


How can you use Pricing to your advantage?

Don't let these numbers scare you. Instead, see it as anopportunity to gain an advantage and increase your sales !

Pricing  in e-commerce can act as a traffic-generating marketing tool, influence comparison engines and increase your conversion rates.

There are many pricing strategies.

Here we will detail different pricing strategies that may prove to be the deciding factor you were looking for to win the online competition



Cost-Based Pricing Strategies

This method requires the company to know all of its unit costs for each product in its catalog and then set a target profit margin per product.

The formula is as follows:

Unit costs

Here are most of the common costs in e-commerce :

This may seem obvious, but it is really shocking to see how many e-merchants do not know in detail their unit costs

The target profit margin

Now let's take a look at the second part of the equation, the target profit margin.

AND this is where most e-merchants become too greedy

The crucial task is to find the right profit margin that will maximize your profits without causing you to lose customers.

There are 2 pitfalls to avoid:

To determine the right price positioning, two major factors  must be taken into account that play an important role in the price/demand relationship:

For example, when you sell a diamond necklace, you know that price is not the most important criterion for buyers and that they don't have a real point of comparison. However, in a sector like consumer electronics, where competition is fierce and products are identical, players with relatively high prices have very little chance in the market.


Market-Based Pricing Strategies

If you're not the only player in the market, or if you're not selling a unique product, you should definitely keep an eye on your competitors. There are around 860,000 e-commerce companies active in the industry. In this huge jungle, each company is in direct competition with at least 15 to 20 other companies.

That's why online retailers can't ignore the competition in the market. As we mentioned above, consumers care a lot about price and they compare prices all the time.

Pursuing a competitive pricing strategy doesn't mean undercutting your products and lowering your prices and margins to a minimum. Leading a race to the bottom is not beneficial for anyone.

One of the main benefits of market-based pricing with strong competitive pricing intelligence is that it also allows you to detect opportunities for price increases that maintain a competitive advantage.

Let's take a look at this example: 3 retailers sell the exact same casserole. The former, the most competitive, sells it for £171.08. The second and third sell it for £210.00.

In this scenario, the first retailer could detect this opportunity to increase their price through competitor price monitoring software like Price Observatory and increase their price just below their competitors. It would thus increase its margin while remaining the most competitive on the market.

Dynamic Pricing Strategies

Dynamic pricing is a highly cost-effective e-commerce pricing strategy in which marketers set flexible prices by taking into account costs, target profit margins, market demand, and competitor pricing.

Dynamic pricing allows you to set the optimal prices, at the right time, based on demand and the market in real time while taking into account your business objectives.

Having tons of data is great. But, the key is to convert data into actionable insights.

Dynamic pricing and re-pricing software, like Price Obervatory, collects competitors' prices and immediately adjusts your prices based on their changes and your margin goals.

You can define rules such as:

Dynamic pricing bots work all day long, and your prices will be changed in real-time based on market fluctuations and the rules you set. With this tool, you are able to react to every move in the market, and your prices always remain competitive or optimized.

Dynamic multi-channel pricing

For sellers who sell on marketplaces, there are also features that allow you to generate different prices per marketplace.

Thus, you can define rules for each marketplace based on the prices of competitors present on these marketplaces in order to send an allotted or optimized price for each marketplace. This strategy is very powerful because it allows you not to lower your price unnecessarily on marketplaces on which consumers make their price comparisons while staying on the marketplace.

pricing dynamique



Consumer Pricing Strategies

In all aspects of e-commerce, focusing on your customers is essential. When pricing your products, you need to be able to answer two questions:

Based on the responses you get, then segment your audience to target each group with the right products and prices. Use real-time data and purchase history to accurately identify customer segments.

After you've finished segmenting, set each group's willingness to pay (WTP) for your products. You can conduct WTP research yourself or seek professional help.

Price discrimination

Price discrimination is a tailor-made approach to consumer-based pricing in e-commerce. This strategy allows the same item to be sold at different prices to different buyers. It works on three levels:

  1. First degree: Consumers are charged the maximum of what they are willing to pay for a given product. For example, auction or auction sites. A customer can pay a lot more for a similar item depending on what they are willing to pay.
  2. Second degree : Consumers can choose their price discrimination. For example, they may be offered a lower price if they buy a product in larger quantities.
  3. Third degree : Products are priced differently depending on the customer segments.

This involves taking past and real-time customer data


Bundle Pricing Strategies

Bundling products is simple. It involves selling a range of products together at a discounted price compared to buying each item  individually

For example, many products require accessories. Some are required (like a lens cover on a camera that usually comes with the camera), but some are optional, like a tripod for a camera.

Grouping these products together is a great way to increase average order value, as customers are likely looking for similar items. Someone who buys a DSLR camera is likely to be interested in another lens or tripod.


Market Penetration Pricing Strategies

Penetration pricing is a marketing strategy used to enter a market by slashing prices to attract competitors' customers to their homes. Example: Free on the Box market.

Companies also use this strategy when they want to highlight a new product or service.


Pricing Strategies with Loss Leaders

The pricing strategy with loss leader products involves pricing a few products at a lower level than the market in order to attract customers to your website or store.

Once customers are on your website and convinced that your prices are in the right place, they will be more likely to buy your other items (at regular prices) as well.

This technique is widely used in mass distribution because consumers cannot buy each product on different sites and compare the prices of each product, but it also works in other sectors, such as cosmetics, DIY, etc., on which the consumer has several potential purchases to make.

For example, an electric toothbrush is a great appeal product. This electric toothbrush costs £99.

While we don't know the manufacturing costs, we can assume that they make most of their profits on replaceable brush heads.

When you think of an electric toothbrush, you don't tend to buy them often. And so brands can afford to sell them at a loss. Because they know that they will easily recoup their lost profit costs thanks to accessories that need to be changed much more regularly for oral hygiene.

So, if you want to implement a loss leader strategy but are worried, think about complementary products that you can highlight and that people will need to come back to your store for an additional purchase.


Price Skimming Pricing Strategies

E-commerce price skimming involves setting high prices during the launch phases. This means that companies can take advantage of the "novelty" effect of their product and maximize their profits from the start.

The takeaway from price skimming is that there are consumers who want to be the first to get a product. They love the feeling of exclusivity.

If you want to implement price skimming, use phrases like "exclusive offer" or "limited availability", "be the first to get your hands on", "pre-order", "preview"... in your marketing text to emphasize the urgency of the call.

Apple is the best example of a price skimming strategy. During the run-up to the release of a new iPhone, there are rumors and buzz even before the release announcement .

Once the time for the announcement comes, there has already been enough excitement generated to increase customers' appetite for purchase.Future iPhone owners camped out in front of the store to be among the first to get their hands on the new model. Others would pay weeks before



In conclusion, build your own Pricing Strategy

Pricing, when taken seriously and treated in a smart and creative way, turns into a secret and highly effective marketing tool.

The approaches we have shared here are not exclusive. You don't have to pick one and forget about the others. On the contrary, like most marketing and growth strategies, they work best when integrated into a blended strategy.

These strategies are also not exhaustive. You can find others, or even invent them. Be creative!

Define your business goals, needs, and interests. Then, decide which of the above strategies would work well with your goals. Combine them into a single pricing strategy that will fit your needs.

Finally, pricing is not a static task and requires a continuous effort to optimize and refine it as your eCommerce business grows. Just like any other ecommerce operation you need to manage, there will always be room for improvement and it won't be an easy task. But, fortunately, there are tools like Price Observatory that offer advanced solutions for e-tailers and brands  that allow you to define optimized pricing strategies adapted to your business.

For personalized advice on the pricing of your products, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts on our Price Observatory website.

Contact us for a demo, a real-world test or information


Omnibus EU Directive impact on Pricing Strategies

The Omnibus Directive : a term that resonates more and more in e-commerce circles, but despite its importance, many retailers and manufacturers do not know it precisely or have doubts about how to take it into account in their pricing strategy.

In this article, we'll dive into the world of the Omnibus Directive, explaining its background, purpose, and providing practical tips for staying compliant.

What is the Omnibus Directive?

The Omnibus Directive (EU) 2019/2161 is a European regulation aimed at modernising and harmonising consumer protection rules in the European Union in the digital and e-commerce age. However, it applies to both physical warehouse and online businesses.

 The new rules of the Omnibus Directive came into force on 28 May 2022, as specified in Article 10 of Ordinance No. 2021-1734.

Its objective is to ensure greater fairness and transparency regarding the commercial and pricing practices of merchants, retailers and marketplaces.

The main points of the Omnibus Directive concerning Pricing

1. 1. Price Transparency and Total Price Display

One of the main components of the Omnibus Directive concerns price transparency and the obligation to display the Total Price of a product or service.
The Total Price must be displayed at the beginning of the purchase process and must include all taxes, surcharges and shipping charges.

2. Transparency Regarding Promotions, Strikethrough Prices and Price Changes

In addition, in the context of a price reduction, a promotion, or sales, the Omnibus Directive makes it mandatory, alongside the updated price, to display the Reference Price, i.e. the lowest price offered in the last 30 days. The purpose of this regulation is to  allow customers to clearly assess the discount made and to strengthen confidence in the accuracy of the information provided.

Professionals have the freedom to choose how to display the discount (absolute value, percentage, strikethrough price, etc.).

NB: There are two exceptions to this rule: perishable goods and progressive Early Booking for travel, for example.

3. Transparency Regarding Personalized Prices

The personalized prices applied by certain sites based on consumers' purchasing behavior should be clearly displayed. For example, offers based on recent purchase history, such as Amazon's  with its recommended product carousel, should clearly state the original price, as well as the percentage and amount of the discount.


Risks of sanctions

Violators of these rules face  up to two years in prison and a fine of €300,000 for misleading commercial practices. The DGCCRF will be responsible for ensuring compliance with these rules during its inspections, in particular during large-scale price reduction operations such as sales or "Black Friday".


Best Practices for Brands and Retailers

Now that we have a better understanding of what the Omnibus Directive means in terms of pricing, let's take a look at some best practices that brands and e-tailers can adopt to comply with this regulation while offering an optimal customer experience.

1. Price Transparency from the Start

Make sure that all pricing information  is clearly displayed at the beginning of the purchase process, including taxes and shipping costs. Avoid hidden fees that might surprise customers at checkout

2. Clear Return & Refund Policy

Set up a  transparent  and easily accessible return and refund policy. Consumers need to know exactly what they can expect in terms of returns and refunds if something goes wrong with their purchase.

3. Verified Reviews

Be sure to only submit customer ratings and reviews that are verified by a reliable system to ensure that the reviews posted are from consumers who have used or purchased the products. Control and verification procedures must also be displayed and easily accessible by the consumer.

4. Protection of Personal Data

Make sure your website complies with GDPR data protection regulations. Obtain explicit consent from users to collect and process their personal data, and ensure that robust  security measures are in place to protect that data from breaches.

5. Transparent Communication with Customers

Be transparent in your communications with customers. Provide clear information about the products and services you offer, and respond quickly and effectively to any questions or concerns raised by customers

What are the impacts on Pricing strategies and Dynamic Pricing tools?

1. Use Price Intelligence Tools

Price monitoring tools are used to monitor the prices charged by competitors and/or resellers and to monitor their compliance with the rules as well as market fluctuations. By using these tools strategically, businesses can adjust their own prices based on market trends while remaining competitive.


2. Implement a compliant Repricing Strategy

 Repricing, or dynamic price adjustment, is a common practice to stay competitive in a fast-paced business environment. However, it is important to ensure that price adjustments comply with the regulations for advertising price reductions. By using intelligent algorithms and taking into account price intelligence data, companies can automate the repricing process while ensuring compliance with the Omnibus Directive.

Brands, on the other hand, can ensure that their resellers comply with its rules.


3. Ensuring Transparency and Integrity

In all pricing and repricing actions, transparency and integrity must be prioritized. Consumers must be able to trust the prices displayed and be assured that they are not victims of misleading marketing practices. By complying with regulations and taking an ethical approach to pricing, companies can build consumer trust and ensure their reputation in the marketplace.


The benefits of a more transparent pricing strategy

An Omnibus Pricing Strategy has a multitude of benefits for e-commerce, including :

  1. Improved price transparency and reliability : By accurately displaying discounts and complying with regulations, companies increase transparency in their pricing practices.
  2. Increased customer trust and satisfaction : Clear and honest pricing fosters customer trust, which can lead to better customer satisfaction and retention.
  3. Retention and acquisition of new customers : Ethical and transparent pricing can attract new customers while retaining existing ones, due to the increased trust it generates.
  4. Avoidance of deceptive pricing practices : By complying with the Omnibus Directive, online retailers avoid misleading practices that could damage their reputation.
  5. Promotion of fair competition : Fair pricing practices promote healthy and fair competition in the marketplace.
  6. Highlighting quality and value : By presenting prices based on real data, companies emphasize the quality and value of their products or services.
  7. Encouraging ethical practices : Pricing in line with the Omnibus Directive encourages companies to adopt ethical and transparent pricing practices.
  8. Contributions to sustainable growth : By building trusting relationships with customers and promoting fair competition, companies can foster sustainable business growth.




At Price Observatory, we offer advanced solutions for e-tailers and brands that allow you to adapt to the Omnibus Directive, ensuring  your company's compliance while applying an optimized pricing strategy.

E-merchants, stay competitive while complying with price regulations in an efficient way, thanks to our Dynamic Pricing module from Price Observatory

Brands and Manufacturers, monitor your resellers' promotional practices with our powerful, reliable and easily accessible price monitoring tools

For personalized advice on the pricing of your products and the Omnibus Regulations, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts on our Price Observatory website. Contact us for a demo, a real-life test or information

5 Tips for Choosing Your Price Monitoring Software

In the fast-paced world of e-commerce, staying ahead of your competitors' trends and movements is key to staying competitive. Competitive intelligence, as a strategic practice, requires appropriate tools to collect, analyze, and interpret relevant data. However, choosing the right tool can prove to be a challenge in itself. Here are five key tips to guide you in choosing your competitive intelligence and price intelligence  tool for e-commerce.

1. Define your specific needs

Before you start your search, it's important to clearly define your specific competitive intelligence needs. This step will help you narrow down your search and choose a tool that precisely meets your needs.

A. What objectives do you want to meet with this tool ?

B. What types of products do you want to track ?

C. What types of data do you want to collect ?

D. What types of sites do you want to monitor ?

E. Who will use the tool and how?

F. How will the tool interface with your existing systems ?

G. What features are a  must-have for your business?


To help you define your needs and think of all the useful features:
Discover the benefits of Price Observatory for Retailers
Check out the Features for Retailers brochure

2. Assess the reliability and accuracy of the Data

Make sure that the tool you are considering offers comprehensive coverage of data relevant to your industry. Check the frequency of data updates (daily), the reliability of the data, and the accuracy of the information provided

A. Reliability of the data

Above all, a competitive intelligence tool must provide reliable, easily verifiable and verified data. For this, the accuracy of the algorithms is essential. Various control phases must also be carried out to ensure the validity of the data collected. Human control is also essential for all collated data that is not matched by EAN code or unique reference.

B. Frequency of surveys

The tool must also be able to collect daily or even real-time data. Make sure that the tool provides daily price readings and that you can refresh the data at any time in 1 click.

C. Accuracy of the data

Make sure the data is accurate. In particular, check that:

D. Test the tool in real-world conditions

The best way to ensure the reliability and quality of the data and free test

The Price Observatory software offers free 1-day tests in real-world conditions. Contact us for more information

3. Investigate how to access data

Make sure the tool offers a variety of convenient ways to read and use data :

4. Consider Scalability and Integration

Your business may evolve over time, and your competitive intelligence needs may also change.

Choose a tool that is scalable and able to scale as your business grows.

Is the software publisher open to specific development and to adapt to the needs of its customers or is it more in a mass logic?

Additionally, make sure the tool can easily integrate with other tools and platforms you already use, such as your inventory management system or e-commerce platform.

5. Evaluate customer support and value for money

Finally, don't underestimate the importance of customer support and value for money.

Opt for a provider that offers responsive and knowledgeable customer support to help you with any issues or questions.

Additionally, carefully evaluate the cost of the tool in relation to its features and the value it brings to your business. A competitive intelligence tool can be a valuable investment, but it needs to offer value for money to be profitable in the long run.

In conclusion

In conclusion, choosing the right e-commerce competitive intelligence tool is essential to stay competitive in the market. By following these five key tips, you'll be able to select a tool that perfectly meets your needs and helps you make informed strategic decisions for your business.

For personalized advice on the pricing of your products, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts on our Price Observatory website. Contact us for a demo, a real-life test or information

Like Apple, test the pricing strategy of the decoy effect

In the complex arena of e-commerce and web marketing, there is a subtle but incredibly effective strategy: the lure effect or the lure of price. This pricing technique is based on the deliberate addition of a significantly less attractive option among the alternatives offered, with the aim of making the other options more attractive by comparison. It is a game of mirrors where consumers' choices are distorted by the presence of a clearly less advantageous option.

In this article, we explain how it works and how to use it well through concrete examples.

Some brands, such as Apple, Spotify, Pathé... know how to use this effective technique in a subtle way to maximize their profits while respecting their consumers.


1/ Manipulate consumers by adding a decoy price option

The decoy effect cleverly exploits certain flaws in our cognitive psychology. When we are faced with several options, our brains naturally look for points of comparison to assess their respective value.

Adding a significantly more expensive option creates a benchmark that influences our perception of what is reasonable and affordable. It's as if this extravagant option acts as a yardstick, implicitly determining what is acceptable in terms of price for a given product.

This is because consumers tend to change their shopping preferences when they are offered a third option. This means that if the customer clearly prefers option A, which is cheaper than option C, he can change his mind if he is offered another option B in the meantime, between A and C in terms of price but significantly less advantageous than C. This effect has been studied in neuromarketing as one of the most effective cognitive biases to apply in e-commerce.


2/ Professor Dan Ariely's experience about the decoy price effect

In his book "Previsibly Irrational," behavioral economist and professor Dan Ariely demonstrates how a major magazine used this technique to increase its subscription sales.

Consumers were offered three types of magazine subscriptions:

  1. An exclusively online subscription for €59
  2. A paper subscription only for €125
  3. A subscription combining online access and paper format, also priced at €125

At first glance, Option 2 seems like an aberration. Why opt for a paper-only subscription at the same price as an offer that includes both paper and online access?

Faced with these 3 options, 16% of consumers chose option 1 at €59 and 84% chose option 3 at €125; Not surprisingly, none chose option 2.

However, the real revelation of this experiment appears when the decoy price is removed from the equation. When the latter option is removed, consumer preferences often change significantly. What was once considered a value proposition suddenly becomes less appealing, while initially overlooked options suddenly take on prominence.

Faced with only 2 options, 68% of consumers chose option 1 at €59 and 32% chose option 2 at €125.

It is therefore clear that the intermediate option was not superfluous; it made option 3 more attractive to consumers.

3/ Decoy Price examples from everyday life

An obvious example of the decoy effect is the packet of popcorn or candy at the movies.

When there are only two options, small or large package, the customer will conclude that the large package is more expensive and they don't want to eat as much popcorn. He will therefore buy according to his needs.

Small package → 3€ Large package → 7€

However, by offering a third prize, the decision changes. What for?

Small package → 3€ Medium package → 6,50€ Large package → 7€

The new price, the lure, will trick consumers into choosing the most expensive product, when they don't need it, because they feel like they 're getting a good deal and making a better purchase. This strategy is part of psychological pricing, because it is based on the interpretation of prices that buyers make, rather than on the real value of the products



4/ Which products does the Decoy Price Effect work with?

The decoy effect is effective with:



5/ What are the techniques to make the Decoy Price effect work?

6/ The risk with the misuse of the Decoy Price pricing technique

The main risk with this pricing technique is that buyers become aware of the scheme. This can damage brand image and cause the consumer to abandon their purchase. This technique should therefore be used with caution and fairness while respecting the consumer. For example, by offering an intermediate option that is clearly less advantageous, but not completely absurd either


In conclusion

The decoy effect is much more than just a marketing trick. It is a powerful tool that shapes our perceptions and influences our purchasing behaviors in ways that are often unsuspected. Understanding how price lure influences our decisions can allow e-tailers  to design more effective pricing strategies and maximize sales, while respecting consumers and avoiding overly underhanded and manipulative marketing tactics.

For personalized advice on the pricing of your products, do not hesitate to contact our team of experts on our Price Observatory website. Contact us for a demo, a real-life test or information