Picture a scenario where you're unaware of your competitors' recent price adjustments, resulting in you missing out on sales opportunities, losing customer loyalty and leaving valuable capital tied up in inventory that you’d prefer to be selling.
In the fast-paced landscape of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) retail, staying ahead of pricing trends is not just a competitive advantage—it's a necessity for sustainable growth.
In this article, we’ll share how retailers just like you are empowering automated price scraping tools to make informed decisions, to gain the competitive edge.
...you’re also spending valuable time manually price checking when you could be using your time more effectively.
1. What is price scraping?
Unlocking the power of dedicated price scraping software, automated price scraping tools efficiently gather online data including website URLs, product names, and prices from both competitor websites and major marketplaces like Amazon and Google Shopping.
Whether you prefer daily or weekly comparisons, our easy, reliable and affordable price scraping solution collects this information for you. By doing the heavy lifting, means you can quickly adjust your own prices to stay competitive and protect your margins.
According to Deloitte, "Data-backed price management initiatives bring significant results in the short-term perspective: 2%-7% increase in business margins and a 200-350% average growth in ROI over a 12-month period."
Manually price checking means you’re wasting time collecting competitor prices when you could be using this valuable time more effectively to adjust your own prices and run your business..
2. Is Price Scraping Legal?
Collecting data by scraping from platforms such as Google Shopping, Amazon, or any other eCommerce websites is legal because the information being gathered is inherently public and accessible to users.
Here at PricingHunter we recommend retailers avoid scraping sensitive or proprietary information, respecting privacy and intellectual property rights.
Providing the right pricing with the right product assortment helps to deepen customer loyalty
3. What are the Benefits of Price Scraping?
Here’s three ways how PricingHunter’s retail clients take advantage of price scraping:
a. Competitive Insights:
Gain the strategic edge by comparing your competitors' pricing. This enables you to adjust your prices quickly, maintaining competitiveness so you can safeguard your profit margins.
b. Product Assortment:
Price scraping provides retailers with insights into competitors pricing and product ranges. PricingHunter’s clients use our service to identify new, potentially appealing products not currently listed in their inventory.
c. Attract New Customers:
Lower barriers of entry in online retail attract new competitors aiming to challenge market share. Offering optimal pricing and a diverse product assortment deepens customer loyalty and attracts new, price-conscious shoppers.
According to our consumer survey, 96% of respondents said they compared prices before buying. 79% said that comparing prices was important to them.
4. Price scraping isn’t always easy and here’s why.
Websites are complex and here at PricingHunter we overcome a variety of issues which can obstruct the smooth collection of data.
Missing UPCs, EANs and GTINs product codes as well as counteracting anti-scraping bots stop or slow down collection processes which is why we focus on collecting data using the URLs you know exist.
Without continuously checking, the accuracy and quality of the data will naturally degrade over time. Imagine adjusting prices based on inaccurate information - that’s a costly mistake.
That’s why engaging with an experienced competitor price scraping provider is the best method of reliably collecting data you need on a regular basis.
Ready to scale-up your price scraping approach?
PricingHunter’s 14-day free trial gets you up and running so you can experience how valuable price scraping can be, removing the need to laboriously manually check online prices manually, freeing up your valuable time to manage your retail business.
