Case Study: How Pricer24 Helps TP-Link Maintain Market Leadership in Ukraine

Client

TP-Link is the world’s largest provider of networking equipment in the small office/home office (SOHO) segment. TP-Link devices are sold in all leading online and retail stores in Ukraine.

Pricer24 has been collaborating with TP-Link’s Ukrainian office since September 2019. In this article, Anna Rostotska, Manager of Internet Channel Operations at TP-Link Ukraine, shares her experience with the Pricer24 platform and discusses the benefits the brand gains through automated monitoring of internet partners and competitors.

Task

Maintaining the Brand’s Price Positioning

Maintaining price positioning protects the profitability of products and ensures equal conditions for all sellers. Every manufacturer strives for the same product to have the same price tag, whether the customer sees it in a retail location or in a niche online store. This is an ideal situation for the brand, but in reality, it’s more complicated because we cannot force all partners to set the same markup level. However, there is a solution: stimulate market players to adhere to a unified price. And for that, we need to have up-to-date data on prices for our products across all partners. Therefore, we needed a tool that could gather this information with high frequency and accuracy.

We started looking for a platform that provided data in the most visual and understandable format. This would allow managers to quickly:

• See all partner prices
• Assess price deviations
• Identify who was the first to drop the price
• Determine at what prices products are sold during non-working hours

Ensuring Our Products’ Market Presence

To maintain market leadership, we need to control the presence of our assortment on our partners’ digital shelves. Increasing distribution in terms of both quantity and quality, expanding the range of products, and securing more shelf space from partners all fall under the responsibility of our department.

We must track the disappearance of positions from the market and ensure the swift addition of new TP-Link items to partners’ websites.

Additionally, we must understand shelf share — both our own and that of our competitors in the market as a whole and specifically with individual partners. This helps us make decisions about expanding the assortment and representation in specific online stores or ensuring our partner is well-stocked with our products.

We need reports that show the:

• Presence of product listings on partner websites
• Availability of our products online
• Dynamics of changes in product representation in our partners’ online stores

Competitive Intelligence

Analyzing the competitive environment and monitoring similar products and new arrivals are also crucial aspects of our business.

To have a complete market picture, we need data on our competitors on things such as prices, discounts, and promotions for similar products. With this real-time information, we can respond promptly to competitors’ actions.

Solution

Data Collection

We provided the Pricer24 team with our catalog (more than 250 SKUs) as well as a list of partner websites for monitoring (24 online stores and the Hotline price aggregator). Additionally, we provided a list of competitor brands in specific categories to monitor similar products.

At the next stage, the Pricer24 team matched all our SKUs with product listings on partner websites from our list.

The platform started collecting data on:

• Product prices
• Prices for similar items (competitors’ products)
• Availability statuses for our products in partners’ online stores
• Similar item availability statuses (for competitors’ products)
• Competitors’ promotions
• Number of TP-Link products on each website from our list

To monitor the appearance of new competitor positions on partner websites, the Pricer24 team created a custom report displaying all new items within a month. By regularly reviewing this report, we can see when new competitor positions enter the market, and if they are similar to ours, we can link them with our SKUs in Pricer24.

This way, everything new that our competitors offer is immediately displayed in the report on similar products, keeping us well-informed.

Reports and Analysis

With the Pricer24 team, we have created optimal report settings so that each report promptly addresses our daily analytical questions.

We regularly use these reports in various configurations.

Price Comparison

This report reflects the number of offers on the market categorized as equal, higher, or lower prices relative to the benchmark. We can analyze the overall price status of our SKUs as well as specific partners, categories, segments (such as bestsellers), or products.

This report, like any other, can be downloaded from Pricer24 in a convenient tabular form. We can export a table with a list of models, their current prices at retail partners, and recommended prices and send it to stakeholders of the online store. The partner then receives a list of models with links and product card codes for quick search in their catalog (as the same SKUs can have different names on different platforms). As a result, partners can promptly adjust the prices on their website.

Assortment Analysis

Thanks to this report, we understand how our assortment is represented across partner platforms. With just one click, we can see how many products are marked as out of stock or not found (no product listings at all) throughout the market or in specific online stores.

Market Analysis

We use this report to analyze competitor analogs and compare them with our own positions.

We can quickly analyze products from other brands and identify those with the highest ratings and the most reviews. Additionally, our team sees current promotions on competitors’ products, their minimum prices, and their positions in product listings on competitor websites. We then use this data to create our own plan for advertising activities.

Price Deviations History

Thanks to this report, we can track the dynamics of deviations from the recommended price level over a certain period. For example, we can see that deviations peak on weekends.

Additionally, with historical data, we can see which online store was the first to set a lower price for a particular product.

Dynamics of Assortment Changes

To monitor the addition of our positions by partners or timely notice the washing out of our products from the market (an increase in the number of items marked as out of stock), we need to see the situation dynamically. This report shows how the representation of TP-Link products changes among partners from day to day.

Results

1. Maintaining unified price positioning allows us to guarantee fair conditions for all partners.
2. The automation of data collection has significantly simplified the work for our managers, reducing time by times.
3. Analyzing competitors’ similar and new products contributes to maintaining competitiveness in the market. We know what competitors offer, at what price, and what promotions they use to boost their flagship products, and we can react based on data, not intuition.