4 Considerations for a Brand’s Pricing Strategy

Developing a successful ecommerce strategy comes down to focusing on four aspects of the Ecommerce Equation: traffic, conversion, price, and availability. If a brand can optimize their strategy for each of these areas, they can reach profitable ecommerce growth.  Focusing on and determining pricing for your products on various marketplaces, such as Amazon and Walmart, and knowing how to keep it consistent can be an overwhelming task.

In the world of ecommerce, maintaining brand control is a constant battle. And having the right data and resources is a key part to knowing what your pricing strategy should be. Partnering with an ecommerce accelerator, like Pattern, who's committed to upholding your pricing policies on marketplaces by providing brands with data and resources is a great way to keep your prices more stable. For brands focusing on optimizing their pricing strategy, here’s four things to consider:  

1. MAP Compliance

Part of a successful pricing strategy is creating a solid MAP policy and enforcement strategy. Having a MAP policy protects your brand, protects the margins of your resellers, and maintains fair competition across all of your distribution channels.  Enforcing MAP compliance can be done by simply monitoring online product prices across digital channels to identify fluctuations in the market and identifying sellers that are violating your policy.

2. Omnichannel Price Parity

Creating the same brand experience for your customers across multiple channels, including pricing, helps establish brand control in the long run. The reality of ecommerce is that your consumers will cross-shop, hoping to find the cheapest price before making a purchase. Establishing the same price and quality of your presence on all marketplaces and all channels for your product through marketplace syndication guarantees your customers a seamless and uniform brand experience, and ensures sales go to your brand rather than an unauthorized seller.

3. Distribution Control

Without proper distribution control, your product could end up in the hands of disjointed sellers who lower your marketplace price to sell their inventory and make quick profits.  Narrowing your distribution has a direct influence on your pricing strategy and protecting your brand. Narrow distribution allows for price control because you can better define how your sellers can price, who they can sell to, and how they deal with extra inventory.

4. Unauthorized Sellers

It can be very easy for brands to lose control of their pricing strategy when they can’t halt the actions of unauthorized sellers. Typically, these brands are either stuck in a game of whack-a-mole or just ignoring the warning signs of bigger issues and hoping for the best. But, when a disjointed selling strategy isn’t handled right, the consequences can be devastating to profitability.

Improve Your Pricing Strategy With a Partner Like Pattern

Without the right pricing strategy, brands can easily find themselves on the Profitability Death Spiral. This Death Spiral damages brand equity, hurts conversions, and can lead to Buy Box Suppression on Amazon, hindering traffic as well. And as prices get lower and lower, your profit margin withers away, decreasing your overall revenue. To avoid the Profitability Death Spiral, make sure you have a solid pricing strategy in place. As an ecommerce accelerator and top seller on Amazon, Pattern empowers you with the data and all experts teams you need to maximize profitability and accelerate your brand on all marketplaces. Looking for a better pricing strategy? Contact us.