Price monitoring in the Consumer Electronics industry
- 12 January 2021
In this article, you will find tips on how to use price tracking software in a booming consumer electronics industry. You will find insights for online shops which want to stay competitive on the fast growing market
We will cover the following topics:
- What are the characteristics of the consumer electronics market?
- Why are price monitoring and dynamic pricing (repricing) such popular topics in the consumer electronics industry?
- Which functionalities and reports provided in the price tracking tool are crucial?
- Real life cases
- How to start monitoring prices systematically?
1. What are the characteristics of the consumer electronics market?
Consumer electronics industry covers electronic products which are regularly used by customers. The most popular products within this industry are:
- Smartphones (according to Statista, the telephony segment accounted for 48% of the Consumer Electronics market in 2019)
- Computers
- Laptops
- Tablets
- TVs
What is characteristic of this market?
- The market is booming. According to Statista, it has grown 17.6% in 2020 only:
The reason is not only the strong demand – accelerated by the COVID pandemic, which we commented in the article Monitors getting more expensive, headphones getting cheaper. How are prices changing during a pandemic? – but also the rising competition which made consumer electronics goods more affordable.
- The life cycle of consumer electronics products is relatively short. It is mostly caused by the technological progress and releases of the new versions of the product. It means that if you are not competitive on time, you can end stocked up.
- Online sales are gaining importance – currently, 37% of consumer electronics is sold online worldwide. In some countries it is even more popular – in the US, it was predicted to account for 49.5%. It has to be taken into account when thinking about competing in this industry.
2. Why are price monitoring and dynamic pricing (repricing) topics so popular in the consumer electronics industry?
As we showed above, online sales have big importance in the consumer electronics sector. And what is the most important factor for customers when they buy online? As several researches show, price is the most relevant factor for customers when purchasing online.
It means that an online shop which wants to be popular amongst customers should offer competitive prices. Without a price monitoring tool it is almost impossible to track all the offered SKUs in all the relevant channels every day. With price tracking software, you can have a short glimpse on the panel every day and see your shop’s ranking (position):
Other relevant information displayed is about opportunities for profit increase or important changes in the market. In order to always be up to date, you can receive such insights in e-mail alerts as well.
The second functionality which is often used is dynamic pricing (repricing). It gives you a possibility to change the price in the online shop according to the current market position. How does it work? You set customized rules according to which the prices in your shop should be changed. It can include such rules as “being the cheapest on Google Shopping”, “being cheaper than the average on the market” provided specific conditions (e.g. minimum profit margin). Thanks to that, you can automate your pricing without additional manual work and time needed. If you have seen competitors being always 5 cents below your price – it is very probable that they use such rules for their pricing.
3. Which functionalities and reports provided in the price tracking tool are crucial?
What is relevant when looking for a price monitoring & repricing software?
- Clear market overview – price monitoring tool should enable you not only to check your position on the market but also to identify the most relevant competitors. In the Dealavo tool, you can see your position on the market in regard to every single product and see how many other online shops offer it. You can also easily see which products you have in common with each of the competitors.
- All data integrated in one place – thanks to having the data from all the platforms in one panel, you can understand the situation with one glimpse only.
- Data displayed in charts – there is no easier way to see a trend than looking at a chart. That’s why at Dealavo we try to visualize the data in very intuitive way – with charts including information about different competitors’ prices in a specified time range
- Dynamic Pricing – to react quickly, it is recommended to implement dynamic pricing based on customizable conditions. Some shops use different rules depending on the channel or country – with Dealavo software it is not a problem.
- E-mail alerts – to be always up to date with relevant changes in the market, you should make sure you can receive e-mail notifications every time there is an important price increase / decrease in the market, or when there is an opportunity to increase your price etc. With Dealavo, you can choose when exactly you want to receive such an e-mail (e.g. when the prices decrease more than 15%).
- API integration – to implement data from the tool to your system, API integration is crucial – especially if you monitor hundreds or thousands of products. With Dealavo, you always get an API.
- Data available in csv – for data analysis, it can be important to have data in csv format as well. Dealavo offers it for all of the clients.
- Availability information – it happens that your competitors offer products at very low prices, but then it turns out that they are not available. It can even happen that even though there are several listed offers, you are the only shop which actually has the product. It is crucial to have such information in the tool.
- Frequency of the updates – to react fast, you need frequent updates. At Dealavo, we can offer you to refresh informationi even every 15 minutes.
4. Real life cases
When is price monitoring particularly important? From our experience, especially when there are unpredictable changes in the market. Recently, the most discussed one is of course the COVID pandemic. It had an influence on the consumer electronics market – mostly because of the remote work and online schooling which often required new equipment. By keeping on track with the market every day, you will not omit any pricing moves done by your competitors in the response to such events.
The other use case typical for the consumer electronics industry is being able to track promotions which happen for only a few hours during the day, e.g. in the evening. If a shop monitors prices only once a day, it is possible it wouldn’t see such a move of their competition. With the price tracking tool, it can react instantly after receiving an e-mail alert or analyze it later on the historic charts.
5. How to start monitoring prices systematically?
Once you decide price monitoring and repricing are crucial, here are the next steps you should follow:
- Fill the contact form to have a call during which we could understand your needs and discuss how we can help.
- See the demo of Dealavo price monitoring tool
- Choose the products you would like to monitor
- Choose the websites you would like to track prices on – these can be marketplaces, price comparison websites or online shops
- Our team will do the rest!
Learn more about price tracking in the other industries: