In retailing, E merchants tend to use the same techniques. They are indeed able to benchmark prices in real time in order to keep competitive prices upon competition. It is key for merchants as price search engines are numerous, and shoppers tend to compare prices more than in brick & mortar world. Actually, in the brick & mortar world, most of the time, shoppers tend to check prices online, either to get a discount in store, or to purchase what they found online, the infamous "show rooming" trend.
I read an interesting article about retailers using more and more electronic price tags, rather than standard paper ones. Indeed, most of retailers prefer this technology:
- It secures more accurate pricing in store
- It saves on operational costs while there are perequations happening
- It also provides a better customer experience, with better naming of products, and more information.
But the article also outlines that this new technology allow brick & mortar retailers to compete with Amazon, and other e-retailers. I agree on the fact that electronic price tags allow faster changes in terms of prices. But the article goes beyond, and believe it could empower stores to change their pricing depending on the time, the day of the week, to maximize profits and to compete with Amazon.
I believe indeed pricing will evolve fast, in order to maximize profits, and automated pricing moves could for sure happen soon enough, thanks to big data. But I don't really believe that stores are actually adopting electronic price tags to do so.
But the article remains interesting, because the potential is there, and it would be interesting to test the technology, to see if it is really accurate.
Now, on FMCG products, it seems difficult to twist so much the prices, because you might loose your customers in such complexity, which will eventually be figured out.
What do you think about it?
