Case Study: How Price and Availability Monitoring Helped a Distributor Increase Sales on Partner Websites

Client

Our client is an official distributor in the Ukrainian market of globally renowned computer component brands. They specialize in the sale of computer equipment, including custom-built systems, through their own online store and via the largest Ukrainian electronics retail chains.

The company has been using the Pricer24 platform since 2024. In this case study, we explain how price monitoring helps them stabilize the market against price fluctuations, improve cooperation with partners, and increase sales.

Tasks

1. Ensure retailers’ interest in selling the client’s products

To make it profitable for partners to sell their products, our client creates fair and transparent conditions. One of the best tools for ensuring this is MSRP control. It helps avoid situations where retailers, competing for customers, lower SKU prices to a level that does not provide them with sufficient margin.

Price monitoring has always been an important function of the client’s distribution department. But in the past, managers had to do it manually. Even when the client had fewer SKUs, the entire process — collecting and analyzing partner price data for products and sending notifications about deviations from the recommended price — took at least three hours per day.

The second issue that prompted automation of price monitoring was data relevance:

• When collecting data manually, there is always a risk that by the time the data is gathered, prices in online stores have changed.
• Human error sometimes leads to mistakes when entering price data. Even minor inaccuracies can distort analysis results.
• Manual monitoring limits the scope of data sources. Collecting prices for all SKUs from 20 partners daily was too resource-intensive. The client had to do it selectively, resulting in an incomplete market picture.
• Manual monitoring was only done on business days. Retailers knew this, so they could bypass the recommended price on schedule by lowering prices on weekends or outside managers’ working hours.

2. Ensure maximum product presence on partner websites

Another goal was to increase the client’s share of the digital shelf. With growth in the number of SKUs and partners, new challenges emerged:

• Regular monitoring of product availability with partners
• Prompt control over adding product cards, especially for new or exclusive items
• Monitoring competitors’ product presence with partners to assess the client’s share of the digital shelf

This required regular data collection across 20 product categories on 20 websites. Given the client’s plans to expand their product portfolio and partner network, it became necessary to optimize market data analysis.

The client’s team began looking for an alternative to manual monitoring — a software solution to address all of the above bottlenecks in price and availability analytics. Pricer24 fit the bill.

During an initial consultation, a Pricer24 manager explained in detail how the service works  and how monitoring is configured. The client appreciated our team’s professional approach and understanding of the inner workings of e-commerce, and we began our cooperation.

To get started, our team asked the client about their tasks and business processes in order to customize the Pricer24 platform to meet their exact needs.

Solution

Data Collection

Our client provided us with their catalog — starting with 2,500 SKUs — along with a list of partner websites to monitor (21 online stores) and a technical requirement to monitor prices on the Hotline price aggregator.

After matching and mapping products, the Pricer24 parser began collecting relevant data daily:

• Availability status of the client’s SKUs
• Product prices
• Number of products on each monitored marketplace

Reports and Analysis

The client’s account in Pricer24 contains various reports: Assortment Analysis, Price Comparison, Price History, and Market Analysis. Our manager showed the client how to adjust configurations to choose the most convenient data display: simple or summary tables, charts, or graphs. Saved configurations can be shared with colleagues.

Price Comparison Report

The Price Comparison report is one of the client’s most frequently used tools. It shows in real time whether partners follow recommended prices and immediately displays how much of the client’s assortment is listed with each partner.

Analysis can be done at a high level, or users can drill down to specific partners, categories, or brands using filters. 

The Lower Price column allows the client to quickly identify partners with deviations from the recommended price and export a list of affected products.

If a store is overpricing, it signals a potential loss of revenue due to an uncompetitive offer. In such cases, the client contacts the store’s team — perhaps they are dissatisfied with the margin level or an error occurred during automatic repricing.

The Pricer24 team also helped set up API integration with the client’s internal database. Now, each product manager can instantly check market prices and MSRP compliance for any item, saving significant time compared to the previous manual process.

Assortment Analysis Report

Our client regularly uses the Assortment Analysis report to analyze product presence within their segment.

The first use case is to monitor competing suppliers for brands distributed by the client (MSI, Asus, etc.). The Assortment Analysis report provides insights into which distributor a partner sources products from. If SKUs differ from the client’s, it means the partner is not ordering from the client.

The second use of this report is to monitor market presence, ensuring that all of the client’s products are available on partner websites and guaranteeing product accessibility for customers across different points of sale.

For example, the client may notice that a certain online store does not list their new products. This means the partner either has not received them or has not added them to the site. In such cases, the client can prepare purchase proposals for the partner so that both the online store and the client avoid losing profit due to gaps in product availability.

In this way, the client promptly tracks product availability and quickly identifies potential opportunities.

Price History Report

In the Price History report, the client can evaluate the dynamics of MSRP violations by day over a selected period. The report also shows which store was the first to lower the price of a particular product and trigger a drop below MSRP across the market. In addition, this report can be used to detect deviations occurring at night.

Market Analysis Report

The Market Analysis report provides insights into which products of competitor brands are currently present on the market, competitors’ pricing strategies, product popularity among consumers, and the position of competitors’ products in partners’ product listings.

The Pricer24 platform enables the client to:

1. Regularly monitor the brand’s price positioning on partner websites
2. Identify gaps in product presence in a timely manner and turn them into opportunities
3. Make informed strategic decisions and improve the efficiency of cooperation with retailers

Dashboards

For daily monitoring, the client uses convenient dashboards to quickly focus on competitors’ products, pricing, and market positioning and spot trends. A single glance is enough to see where to start the workday.

For example, if the client sees that there are many MSRP violations, they can expand the report and drill down into the data. If there are no violations, or only a few, they can see that MSRP compliance is either not a concern at the moment or does not require urgent attention.