Price monitoring retailers in Russia
Price monitoring. What it is?
I’ll start with synonyms: price monitoring, competitor monitoring, retailer monitoring, recommended retail price (RRC) or minimum retail price (MRC) analysis.
It's all about the same thing. In carrying out these tasks, it is necessary to collect information about how much the product costs on other source sites.
Who needs it and why?
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It is possible to identify the main target audiences who use such programs:
- online shopping,
- manufacturers and wholesale companies.
Online stores are clearly interested in putting a slightly lower price on their goods than their counterparts (other online stores). It is necessary for their products to buy faster and more often than others. Here, as they say, “sorting by price” decides, because end customers want to pay less. Therefore, it is vital for online stores to have a market price for a product.
Wholesale companies are also interested in market regulation. Most of them have a marketing department, one of whose tasks is to analyze retailers' offers. That is, in essence, marketers need to look for retailers who dump, and take appropriate measures.
Manufacturers are also interested in analyzing general market trends. For example, it is of interest to them to reduce or increase the average prices for the respective brands. Manufacturers are watching not only for their products, but, of course, for competitors' products.
How do price monitoring done manually?
If there is no automated price monitoring, then everything is done manually using Excel. The employees of the marketing department with a certain periodicity form reports with the prices of goods on the source sites. This work is very boring and requires perseverance, and the results are relevant for a very short time. Therefore, department heads are willing to consider options for automation in order to offload their employees and to obtain better and more operational data.
Analysis of project requirements
Before starting another price monitoring project, it would be good to discuss the following points. Which sites need to analyze prices? If on Yandex.Market, then this is one way to solve the problem, and if on other sites, then the solution will be different.
The first thing to mention about monitoring prices in Russia is, of course, working with Yandex.Market. Here are some facts in the context of monitoring prices on the Market:
• Yandex.Market is a database of trade offers up to date.
• It should be remembered that there are stores that are represented on the Market, but there are also those that are not located there. Note also that stores can not place their entire product catalog in Yandex.Market, but only a part of it.
• Yandex.Market provides affiliate and content access to its API database. This will be discussed later.
It is important to find out the quantity of goods for which the prices are to be analyzed. If this is an online store, then usually the quantity of goods starts from 10 thousand and reaches several tens of thousands. If we are talking about the manufacturer, then usually the number of goods reaches 500 (conditionally). It should be understood that, depending on which company needs price monitoring and for how many suppliers and products, a strategy will be formed, in accordance with which the task will be solved.
Price monitoring tools:
1. Affiliate access to the Yandex.Market API for price monitoring
This option is available if you have an active online store account in Yandex.Market.
Limitations:
- prices are available for products that have a product card on Yandex.Market;
- prices for goods that are given in the form of announcements are not copied;
- there are restrictions on the number of requests per day (up to 20,000 products);
- there are restrictions on the number of offers (prices) for 1 product (the first 10 prices).
2. Content access to the Yandex.Market API
The ability of a specific client to work using the Content API is determined by Yandex.Market managers. To get this access, you must fill out a special form. After filling it in, a reply will be sent about the possibility of using the client of the corresponding access. With this access, you can receive real-time trading offers from the Market by corresponding requests to the API.
Restrictions : None. There are restrictions on the number of requests to the API per second. But these restrictions have no effect on the requirements.
When used : when there is access to a specific API and it is enough to fetch information from Yandex.Market.
3. Parsing prices of separate sites by reference
The meaning of this option is that the price is formed with links to the product cards from which prices will be extracted.
Restrictions: it is necessary to create an excel file manually, and this requires a lot of time.
4. Formation of the price list
The easiest and in some cases the most effective way to solve the monitoring task is to collect articles and prices for them into a two-column excel-price.
To solve the problem in this way, it is necessary on the source site to bypass all the categories, and in them to bypass all the goods and their prices, at the end having formed a price.
Restrictions: development is required for each specific source site.
Advantages: maximum accuracy.
Disadvantages: it is required to process the entire source site.
5. Parsing of prices of separate sites through search
Since there are a lot of goods for analysis and a lot of time is needed to compile a matrix of links to products, we have to solve the problem through a search system on the source site. Here the scheme of work is as follows. Usually, the name or article of the product is inserted into the search query field on the source site and the search is started. Then the results of the issue are analyzed. The first link to the item card is used to extract the price, which then falls into the resulting report.
Restrictions : development is required for each source site. The quality of the search depends on the strings that are sent for the search to the source site, and on the quality of the search system itself on the source site, on which the developer has no influence.
When used : when processing price lists of 500 products.
Each of the described methods for solving the problem of price monitoring has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think that the approaches described above will help you to solve the problems of price monitoring as efficiently as possible.
Nikolay Kekish, Director of CatalogLoader.com
I’ll start with synonyms: price monitoring, competitor monitoring, retailer monitoring, recommended retail price (RRC) or minimum retail price (MRC) analysis.
It's all about the same thing. In carrying out these tasks, it is necessary to collect information about how much the product costs on other source sites.
Who needs it and why?
')
It is possible to identify the main target audiences who use such programs:
- online shopping,
- manufacturers and wholesale companies.
Online stores are clearly interested in putting a slightly lower price on their goods than their counterparts (other online stores). It is necessary for their products to buy faster and more often than others. Here, as they say, “sorting by price” decides, because end customers want to pay less. Therefore, it is vital for online stores to have a market price for a product.
Wholesale companies are also interested in market regulation. Most of them have a marketing department, one of whose tasks is to analyze retailers' offers. That is, in essence, marketers need to look for retailers who dump, and take appropriate measures.
Manufacturers are also interested in analyzing general market trends. For example, it is of interest to them to reduce or increase the average prices for the respective brands. Manufacturers are watching not only for their products, but, of course, for competitors' products.
How do price monitoring done manually?
If there is no automated price monitoring, then everything is done manually using Excel. The employees of the marketing department with a certain periodicity form reports with the prices of goods on the source sites. This work is very boring and requires perseverance, and the results are relevant for a very short time. Therefore, department heads are willing to consider options for automation in order to offload their employees and to obtain better and more operational data.
Analysis of project requirements
Before starting another price monitoring project, it would be good to discuss the following points. Which sites need to analyze prices? If on Yandex.Market, then this is one way to solve the problem, and if on other sites, then the solution will be different.
The first thing to mention about monitoring prices in Russia is, of course, working with Yandex.Market. Here are some facts in the context of monitoring prices on the Market:
• Yandex.Market is a database of trade offers up to date.
• It should be remembered that there are stores that are represented on the Market, but there are also those that are not located there. Note also that stores can not place their entire product catalog in Yandex.Market, but only a part of it.
• Yandex.Market provides affiliate and content access to its API database. This will be discussed later.
It is important to find out the quantity of goods for which the prices are to be analyzed. If this is an online store, then usually the quantity of goods starts from 10 thousand and reaches several tens of thousands. If we are talking about the manufacturer, then usually the number of goods reaches 500 (conditionally). It should be understood that, depending on which company needs price monitoring and for how many suppliers and products, a strategy will be formed, in accordance with which the task will be solved.
Price monitoring tools:
1. Affiliate access to the Yandex.Market API for price monitoring
This option is available if you have an active online store account in Yandex.Market.
Limitations:
- prices are available for products that have a product card on Yandex.Market;
- prices for goods that are given in the form of announcements are not copied;
- there are restrictions on the number of requests per day (up to 20,000 products);
- there are restrictions on the number of offers (prices) for 1 product (the first 10 prices).
2. Content access to the Yandex.Market API
The ability of a specific client to work using the Content API is determined by Yandex.Market managers. To get this access, you must fill out a special form. After filling it in, a reply will be sent about the possibility of using the client of the corresponding access. With this access, you can receive real-time trading offers from the Market by corresponding requests to the API.
Restrictions : None. There are restrictions on the number of requests to the API per second. But these restrictions have no effect on the requirements.
When used : when there is access to a specific API and it is enough to fetch information from Yandex.Market.
3. Parsing prices of separate sites by reference
The meaning of this option is that the price is formed with links to the product cards from which prices will be extracted.
Restrictions: it is necessary to create an excel file manually, and this requires a lot of time.
4. Formation of the price list
The easiest and in some cases the most effective way to solve the monitoring task is to collect articles and prices for them into a two-column excel-price.
To solve the problem in this way, it is necessary on the source site to bypass all the categories, and in them to bypass all the goods and their prices, at the end having formed a price.
Restrictions: development is required for each specific source site.
Advantages: maximum accuracy.
Disadvantages: it is required to process the entire source site.
5. Parsing of prices of separate sites through search
Since there are a lot of goods for analysis and a lot of time is needed to compile a matrix of links to products, we have to solve the problem through a search system on the source site. Here the scheme of work is as follows. Usually, the name or article of the product is inserted into the search query field on the source site and the search is started. Then the results of the issue are analyzed. The first link to the item card is used to extract the price, which then falls into the resulting report.
Restrictions : development is required for each source site. The quality of the search depends on the strings that are sent for the search to the source site, and on the quality of the search system itself on the source site, on which the developer has no influence.
When used : when processing price lists of 500 products.
Each of the described methods for solving the problem of price monitoring has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think that the approaches described above will help you to solve the problems of price monitoring as efficiently as possible.
Nikolay Kekish, Director of CatalogLoader.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/252549/
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