The importance of knowing your competitors’ catalogues

In the current digital paradigm, where the number of eCommerce businesses is growing incessantly, millions of websites are competing to take your place and dominate the market. This is why it’s important to know with which competitors you have products in common with, or not. This percentage is vital for designing your pricing strategy. Using a tool to monitor prices, catalogues, and stock, which automates this process, will undoubtedly be the most effective. Knowing your competitors’ catalogues as well as their prices will definitely push your eCommerce business along the path to success.

Pricing and competitive strategies

Although the price isn’t always the deciding factor when it comes to making a purchase, we can’t deny that it’s a highly conditioning factor, so establishing competitive prices is unavoidable. Being able to consult the pricing history and complete stock catalogue of your competition will give you an insight into who you’re playing with in the market, thus allowing you to set more competitive prices and optimise your strategy. You’ll be the first to know what your competitors have added and will be able to react quickly.

Identify weaknesses and get ahead

Having an assortment of products that are attractive to the consumer is a great challenge for retailers. Knowing the catalogue of your competition won’t only allow you to identify which products are trending and thus create a competitive and profitable catalogue, but it’ll also allow you to identify weaknesses and transform this information into an advantageous way for your eCommerce business to advance in the market. For example, if a competitor runs out of stock for a product under high demand, with the information provided by your monitoring tool (some of which allow you to set alerts to warn you when a competitor has something go “out of stock”), you’ll be able to adjust your strategy for that particular item.

Improve the info in your catalogue

Creating, maintaining, and improving the descriptions of your products can be a complex task. During the monitoring of your competitors’ products, you’ll obtain valuable information, such as SKUs, UPCs, EANs, MPNs, descriptions, images, specifications, as well as any other information that might appear on the eCommerce websites that you select.

In short, a good catalogue intelligence tool will be one that allows you to have in-depth knowledge of your competitors’ complete catalogues and their availability. It should also have an alert system that can be configured according to the needs of each company. In addition, the information it provided needs to be up to date, true, and reliable, which is what will give you a great strategic advantage.