Is it advisable to match your Offline and On-Line pricing policy?

Consumers currently expect retailers to have available product information online, pricing policy check order status, contact customer service through social networks, etc. Therefore, the vast majority of retail companies have a requirement for both a physical and online store, this is called multichannel sales because, as the name suggests, the business has more than one sales channel.

But what is the main objective of setting up multichannel sales? Having more than one sales channel provides greater visibility and reach of a business’s products and thus an increase in sales.  Additionally, this practice generates more benefits, including an increased brand presence, greater accessibility to potential customers, the possibility of offering customers more options when making their purchases along with having a new way of obtaining relevant information about our customers and their needs.

Should we maintain the same prices in each sales channel?

A large proportion of companies that launch multichannel sales wonder if they should sell products at the same price in all their stores, regardless of the channel, or adapt their prices to each channel depending on the differentiating factors.

The reality is that the majority of retailers sell at the same price in both their online and offline stores, maintaining the same pricing policy in each of their sales channels. The main reason why this is now the common practice is that the majority of customers probably do not appreciate the reasons why there would, potentially, be a difference.  The risk here is that this may be perceived by consumers to be a lack of coordination. Another important reason is a loss of competitiveness that could result; for our offline stores to succeed, we need that their prices are in-line with the market, regardless of the sales channel.

An effective solution when setting prices is to have a competitive price monitoring tool. Some have both online and offline services. The objective of a pricing tool is to intelligently monitor competitor pricing and assist in defining a pricing strategy that is adapted to what is currently happening in the market, in real-time.  In this way, companies can always make better decisions and remain competitive at the same time, whether they match their prices in all their sales channels or, on the contrary, if they set different prices.

In addition to meeting this need, a price monitoring system can also help to improve profit margins of those products that do not have too much competitive pressure in the market, and therefore recover the highest profit-performance on each sale, discover the competitiveness indices of your company and a long list of etcetera’s.