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To set the right prices for products at the right time, companies use dynamic pricing. This approach is based on the flexible change of strategies and tactics of price fluctuations, taking into account market events, statistical data, and goals for market share and marginality. A key element of the dynamic pricing system is the monitoring of product prices. It is a collection of information about the range and cost of products on the market.

Price monitoring is necessary for online and offline stores, suppliers and manufacturers of almost any product. An exception may be products that have no analogues, for example, works of art or products of the military-industrial complex.

If earlier monitoring was labor-intensive due to the need to use manual labor, and the long time for data processing did not allow us to consider them reliable, then with the development of technology, it became possible to monitor hundreds of thousands of positions almost online.

For goods, any information available to the human eye can be collected:

• product availability;
• current value;
• discount price;
• ratings, reviews and so on.

The following sources are used to monitor the prices of goods on the market:

• online stores;
• marketplaces;
• mobile applications;
• Retail Stores;
• price lists of suppliers.

Stages of price monitoring

• Data collection.
  When obtaining data, two major areas of monitoring are usually distinguished:
  • digital sources. For this, parsing and grabbing is used, which allows you to get information from sites or files according to specified algorithms. The robot emulates the behavior of a regular buyer and collects available information. At the same time, taking into account the increase in the number of bots, sites are protected from parsing and block suspicious IP addresses. The "arms race" is going on 24/7. When collecting information from marketplaces, it should be taken into account that in Russia there is no undisputed market leader like Amazon. The representation of goods on a particular marketplace cannot reflect the situation in the entire market.
  • Retail Stores. In most cases, price monitoring can be carried out on the Internet - with the intensification of the struggle for the consumer, offline retailers post information about prices and the quantity of goods available in their retail stores on their websites. If such information is not available, auditors can obtain it. Here, one cannot do without a person, since it is impossible to obtain information legally in another way. The method of collection using a person is more labor-intensive, however, for some areas, such as grocery, it is the only possible one.

• Comparison of goods.In different sources, the same product may be called differently. Therefore, it must be compared and classified. Expert statistical fuzzy search systems allow you to automatically match products with high quality on several parameters, taking into account abbreviations, word forms, images, price checks and other aspects. A similar technology is used in email services, where the system decides whether an incoming email is spam or not.
• Data exchange. The results of monitoring the market prices of goods should be provided in the form you require, depending on the worthwhile goals. When processing large volumes, data transfer via API is used, when working with a small number of positions, it is convenient to use the web interface, and, for example, if it is necessary to respond to price cuts in a timely manner, the platform should send an email notification with a link to the cache of the product page as confirmation.

Parameters for selecting commodity price monitoring systems

• Sources of information.Internet or retail - the choice of source is a fundamental factor. If it is necessary to monitor retail stores, the task is simplified by inexpensive mobile phones with high-quality cameras and neural networks, which allow you to independently determine the necessary information in the photographs of auditors. Photographing shelves increases human productivity by 6 times compared to the process of searching for the necessary product and manually entering data.
• Completeness of monitoring parameters and options of goods.Most services provide data on the only parameter of the product - its price. In this case, information is collected based on a once given link. According to our estimates, the rotation of goods on the largest Russian sites averages 1,000 positions per day. Taking it into account, the best solution is to collect the entire site and then process all the received data.
• Automatic matching of products. Information about goods must be processed and compared with each other. This is the most time-consuming process that is prone to a large number of errors. They are caused by the fact that not all market players use a single system of articles that allow you to uniquely compare products with each other.
• assortment analysis.Information from sites is matched against your product matrix, but unmatched products also play an important role in the competition. This "tail" can be classified into categories and used to analyze the depth and breadth of categories in general. This will allow you to determine a possible shortage or surplus in the number of positions, as well as to review price positioning for the entire category of goods.

Automated monitoring of the commodity price market is mandatory when working with large amounts of information. Platforms collect data, process and correlate it, and then provide it in a convenient way. Savings are achieved by reducing the cost of manual monitoring, as well as by obtaining timely and reliable information that helps to increase profits in comparison with competitors.

How to use price monitoring results

The data obtained can be used for:

• • developing a pricing strategy;

• • analysis of new products and promotional offers;

• • determining the price elasticity of demand;

• • forecasting changes in the cost of goods;

• • determination of seasonal fluctuations;

• finding the best suppliers.

Thus, taking into account the development of competition, information about products on the market contributes to the adoption right decisions, which further lead to an increase in turnover and an increase in sales margins.

Price monitoring, competitor monitoring, retailer monitoring, recommended retail price (RRP) or minimum retail price (MRP) 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 in other companies, in neighboring stores, on competitors' websites.

Market monitoring

Market monitoring is a continuous and methodical process of collecting, analyzing and disseminating information about the external business environment. "Business environment" should be understood in the broadest sense, including all relevant actors: consumers, competitors, distributors, suppliers, developers and technology providers, as well as regulators and the macroeconomic environment.

Market monitoring is based on management theory. In his seminal work Competitive Strategy, first published in 1980, Michael Porter outlined the business need for a mechanism for the systematic collection, analysis and dissemination of information important to companies about competitors and market conditions in general. This information is necessary for companies in order to make the right strategic and tactical decisions, allowing the company to outperform competitors, with an understanding of current market trends.

The basic ideas of the original market monitoring theory still apply today, but many aspects of business have changed since then. The volume of incoming information about the market is rapidly increasing. At the same time, technological progress makes it easier to search and filter data, and also allows you to automate many elements of the process. However, no matter how much process automation and the introduction of new technologies increase the effectiveness of monitoring, market research cannot be fully automated, and a human factor will always be necessary to obtain good results.

One of the main reasons for the low effectiveness of market monitoring is the incomplete understanding of the relationship between market monitoring and strategic management. The information obtained during monitoring should be clearly separated into the information used in the implementation of the strategy and the strategy that helps the company to formulate. There are many other critical factors to consider, but understanding these differences is the first step to effective monitoring.

Strategic management

In today's business world, most large companies have their own market monitoring systems that allow them to collect information about competitors, customers and other market participants. As a rule, the usefulness of such systems is not in doubt, but their specific benefits are often difficult to articulate. To understand how to maximize the usefulness of market monitoring, one should start by analyzing the relationship between it and strategic management.

The process of strategic management is clearly divided into two stages: strategy formulation and its implementation. At the stage of formulation strategic planning, self-assessment and analysis of strategic alternatives are carried out, on the basis of which decisions are made regarding the mission and goals of the company. This is done by the top management of the company.

At the implementation stage strategy is the attraction and use of managerial and organizational resources to achieve the goals. All employees of the company are involved in the process of implementing the strategy (more on these concepts and strategic management in general can be found in David (2008)).

Market monitoring contributes to both the formulation and implementation of strategy, but the two purposes use completely different aspects of market monitoring. The formulation and implementation of a strategy for these purposes should be considered separately and one monitoring process should be established to begin with: experience shows that it is better to first create the process necessary for the implementation of the strategy, and after debugging it, expand the system to the process used in the formulation of the strategy.

The following chapters will describe the basic principles and the optimal structure of the market monitoring process for strategy implementation. The process itself in this article is called the “Market Monitoring System” (SMR). Most market monitoring processes in modern companies are of this type. At the end of this article, we will turn to a process designed to facilitate the formulation of a strategy, which, for the reasons described below, is called "Early Warning System for Threats and Opportunities"(SRO).

Briefly, a market monitoring system (SMR) is the process of monitoring the competitive environment in order to provide useful data to company executives. Thus, SMR is a means of implementing the company's strategy, since it is in the strategy that the part of the competitive environment is set in relation to which monitoring should be carried out. In addition, the relevance of information provided to decision makers is also determined in accordance with the themes and priorities set out in the strategy. It is assumed that the SMR should be able to recognize threats and opportunities for strategic priority areas.

The implementation of the strategy is carried out through the current activities of the company's divisions. The sales team wants to generate revenue, and the CMP can give direction to it. The marketing department seeks to increase the market share of the company, and CMP informs it about the behavior of competitors. The purchasing department seeks resources at the lowest cost, and the CMP assists it by monitoring suppliers and market prices. All of these are aspects of strategy implementation.

Threats and Opportunities Early Warning (EWS) is a process of scanning a broader environment than the one outlined by the current strategy. This process is designed to identify opportunities that lie outside the current strategic priority areas and respond to even subtle signals with a high degree of uncertainty. In this regard, the SRO differs significantly from the SMP. The SRO output is used to identify new strategic alternatives, helping the company formulate new strategies. For this purpose, the SRO can even issue ambiguous, dubious signals that go against the current strategic paradigm, which would be unacceptable for the SMP due to the fuzziness and unprofitability of such output data. Information from the SRO is mainly used by senior officials in the field of strategic planning or senior management.

It is important to emphasize that these two monitoring systems serve different purposes and it is not correct to compare their output data. Ideally, each company should have both systems, but in practice it is easier to first organize construction and installation works and only then - SROs.

Choice of development directions

It is widely believed that for a market monitoring system to be useful for strategic planning and strategy formulation, it must be capable of predicting future changes in the business environment with at least a minimum degree of accuracy. However, such a function is needed not only for formulating a strategy, but also for its implementation.

The choice of development directions and moments for action is the most important function of any market monitoring system. However, the acceptable level of uncertainty of outgoing information for the system is different depending on the purpose for which it provides data: to formulate or implement a strategy. The market monitoring systems used to implement the strategy are characterized by minimal uncertainty. As a matter of fact, often a company organizes market monitoring in order to find all the variables in its market equation. But for the purposes of strategy formulation, this desire for certainty can lead to gaps in the company's perception of the market. For SROs, it is even more desirable to deal with unknown factors, working with a high level of uncertainty. The SMR is designed to notify the company's leaders about what will happen and how these events will affect the company. SRO, on the other hand, provides information about what can happen (and, accordingly, about the possible consequences of these events).

The main advantage of the predictive orientation of the market monitoring system is that it allows the company's management not to react to events, but to anticipate them. Moreover, anticipation involves two aspects: beating the market (taking action before the event occurs) and, more importantly in many situations, beating the competition. Of course, ideally, a company should strive to do both.

The ability to identify your options ahead of time, say, in the event of a new consumption trend, a change in the legal framework, or the emergence of new technologies, is important in itself. However, the ability to do it before the competition means the opportunity to capture more market share, make more profit or enhance the brand image.

Without a predictive monitoring system, a company only learns about market events after they happen. As a result, it can only take action against the consequences of an event that have already occurred and after competitors have already taken their own action. This often results in sub-optimal resource allocation, low profit margins, and below-potential market share.

With a predictive market monitoring system in place, a company can anticipate an event, take appropriate action, and allocate resources ahead of both the event itself and competitors. Thus, the company gets a head start over competitors, a larger market share and higher profits.

However, the following caveat should be taken into account: no matter how predictive potential the monitoring system has, if it does not convey the received information to the company's management or if this management is not ready to base its decisions on this information, the necessary measures will not be taken even if events are predicted. The figure below illustrates this case.

Accordingly, for the effective use of market monitoring system data, it is necessary for the company to receive and use this data, which is achieved when two conditions are met:

• Willingness of senior management to use this data
• Integration of the monitoring system and decisions made on its basis into the functional processes of the company.

The last requirement implies that the market monitoring system should be designed for interaction with various functional divisions of the company, because each of them has its own needs for market research and individual views decisions. If the market monitoring system is not integrated with the management of the organization's departments, forecasting market events will not help to take the necessary actions, and opportunities will be missed.

Basic principles of the monitoring process

The market monitoring process is based on a number of fundamental principles, which are described below. The three main steps in the process are collecting information, processing it into output data, and forwarding that data to decision makers. Each of these stages can be organized in different ways, but the basic structure of the process is quite universal.

Let's call the basic unit of information a "market signal". Michael Porter (1980) coined the term in his book Competitive Strategy, which has become a classic in management literature. He defined it as any action by a competitor that directly or indirectly indicates its intentions, motives, goals, or internal situation. In our opinion, market signals are not limited to the actions of competitors, including also all other market events created by competitors, customers, suppliers and other market participants. Thus, a market monitoring system is a system that allows you to capture market signals from any source, convert them into a functional format and transfer them to management.

It is important to take into account that the incoming and outgoing SMR signals differ significantly from each other, since the main stage of monitoring is the processing of the former into the latter. The understanding of this fact alone can sometimes significantly improve the quality of monitoring, since often a company organizes construction and installation works based on the fact that its function is simply to redirect incoming signals to managers without any processing, and management receives “raw” data that is difficult to understand and inconvenient for use, and often are simply useless.

When organizing construction and installation works, it is useful to consistently plan these three stages. Of course, they also have common elements, and in order to successfully launch a full-fledged process, the stages must be coordinated. However, before further revealing the features of SMP, let's take a look at the main factors for the successful functioning of all three stages.

Table 1. Key success factors for a three-step market monitoring process

Collection of information	Data processing	Referral to executives
You can work with sources using either the push model or the pull model. Be prepared to use both and don't assume you can only use one for all sources.	Signal processing is a labor-intensive process that requires special knowledge and tools.	The process of forwarding information should be developed taking into account the specifics of the work of the manager.
The relevance of the signal may not be revealed immediately, so it is better to pass more incoming signals and filter them at the processing stage than not to get enough information flow.	Incoming signals are evaluated, filtered, archived and converted into monitoring results through editing, analysis, reformatting and classification.	The preferences of each leader must be taken into account on an individual basis.
Incoming signals can be quite highly automated, the collection of information also involves an active search and evaluation of new sources, which requires human resources.	All outgoing market signals must point to some process or serve some purpose.	Participation in the monitoring process by the leaders themselves should be actively encouraged. Different signals can be interpreted differently by different people, and it is the receivers who place the market information in context.
	During the processing phase, incoming signals must be placed in a context that is familiar to the manager and makes sense to him.	The formats, channels and timing of the delivery of results should be established taking into account the activities of decision makers to facilitate their assimilation and application of the information received.
		The formats can vary: emails, paper documents, RSS feeds, Twitter posts, text messages, SharePoint messages, and more.

In practice, in the monitoring process, additional complications of varying degrees and types arise. One such complication is the possible presence of closed feedback loops (when outgoing signals are reused in the monitoring process at one or more stages). This can happen, in particular, due to the processes of joint creation of documents, i.e. cooperation of users when creating them, as well as when end users enter information of their own signals into the system. Below we will explain these situations.

Technological and human resources

Each stage of the market monitoring process can be carried out in a variety of ways, depending on the size of the company, the sector of the economy in which it operates, and other factors. However, as a general rule, a combination of technical and human resources is used at each stage. To maximize the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of the process, the tasks at each step can be automated, and their efficiency can be improved through the use of technological solutions. By searching for keywords and converting various formats to text, you can automatically analyze Internet publications, websites and databases. Market signals can be automatically classified with tags, entered into databases or grouped using predefined algorithms, and sent using automated email systems or RSS feeds. However, there are tasks that cannot yet be completely entrusted to computers. Evaluation and search for new sources of information, as well as most of the tasks at the processing stage, require human resources. In addition, executives consider the results of the work of analysts to be the most valuable and useful. Accordingly, in SMP it is important to strive to optimally combine automated and human-processed elements: the former allow you to increase the productivity and efficiency of the process, and the latter increase its analytical value.

Another aspect of the ratio of automated and non-automated tasks in CMP is the direction of outgoing data. The way in which market monitoring results are communicated to decision makers can have a significant impact on the applicability and usefulness of the information. Porter (1980) noted the need for companies to "creative ways of presenting the results of market research in a concise and convenient form for use by top management." Market monitors should assist decision makers in their day to day activities, not the other way around. Accordingly, at the stage of sending materials to managers, it is necessary to take into account the preferences of the latter in relation to communication methods. If, for example, the first thing an executive checks his email when he arrives at work, he should have emailed the latest market signals by then. If it is customary for executive meetings to print and read agenda items, relevant market research results should be made available to meeting participants in printed or printed form. If a sales representative of a company constantly meets with customers and can only use a mobile phone when traveling, any analytics (for example, information about competitors' products) should be available to him in a format that is easy to read on a phone. These are just a few examples of how minute details can make a difference in the step of communicating market monitoring results to decision makers.

Case Study: Using SharePoint at Tikkurila Tikkurila is a leading Northern European manufacturer of paints and coatings. The company has introduced a number of innovative ways to deliver market research results to executives, taking into account the specifics of their activities. Management accesses the various types of information they need in their work through a specially designed dashboard based on Microsoft SharePoint, and the market research department has chosen to use this dashboard as a channel for delivering their work results. Thanks to the integration of the two systems, information about competitors and market conditions is available directly through the SharePoint panel. In this way, management has quick access to information through a one-stop channel, while the market research department has the opportunity to use a separate software platform to manage the monitoring process.

At the end of the conversation about the monitoring process, let's return to its structure. All stages of the market monitoring process are united by a common goal. Together, they are all designed to transform market signals into useful and understandable information for decision makers. Context discovery is one of the most important tasks of monitoring the market as a whole. Individual market signals must be entered into universal system concepts so that decision makers can make connections between these signals and their own work. Moreover, as a rule, the context of each incoming signal is not immediately obvious, and SMP requires a mechanism to identify the context and bring it to the attention of management.

Another important concept of market monitoring is process integration. The market monitoring system should not be isolated from other processes of the company, because it is a process of obtaining knowledge to improve the quality and efficiency of other processes. Any outgoing SMR data is input for other processes, which must be clearly understood when organizing market monitoring. They usually correspond to the functional divisions of the company, as shown in Figure 3.

The special connection between market monitoring and strategic planning, explained at the beginning of the article, should be taken into account. Accordingly, in Figure 4, the market monitoring process is subdivided into SMRs and SROs, highlighting the relationship between the two processes.

Content and context

Some of the most serious market monitoring problems are related directly to content. In the presence of a large amount of outdated information, the content that is the product of the monitoring process is seen as more of a hindrance than useful information. In order to avoid such a situation, the CMP should provide concise and up-to-date data in a timely manner and in a form accessible to recipients.

Information is valuable and useful to a manager only if it makes sense to him. The meaning of the information is revealed by the context, the absence of which often reduces the quality of the content. The context is derived directly from the company's current strategy and is a system of concepts, topics, areas and priorities that it should focus on. Of course, representatives of various departments of the company work with only part of the context, while management takes into account its entirety.

It should be noted that the context defined by the strategy is wider in content than the strategy itself. The strategy determines the content of the context: for example, if a company chooses a cost leadership strategy in the market for a particular product, its context consists of competitors, current and potential buyers of the product, all participants in the supply chain, as well as production technologies and management principles that will help the company achieve leadership by costs.

The importance of context is easy to justify theoretically, but how to determine it in practice for a market monitoring system? With the help of taxonomies. Taxonomy is a system for classifying information system content, a form of business context representation. A market monitoring system is a subspecies of an information system, usually consisting of a database, various incoming information flows, tools for analyzing and processing information, as well as mechanisms for distributing outgoing data. Throughout the system, the constant element is the context given by the strategy and expressed in the taxonomy.

In practice, taxonomy is a hierarchical system of categories or classes. Each piece of content in the market monitoring system is assigned a tag, that is, a marker of belonging to one or more categories. Tagging is already common for many information systems however, in the field of market monitoring, this practice is sometimes underestimated. The main value of tags is the ability to attach business context to any piece of information, indicating to the decision maker its place in the overall picture of business strategy. However, taxonomy is only useful if it is effective.

As a general rule, the context, and hence the taxonomy for market monitoring, consists of two groups of categories: the first characterizes the competitive environment, and the second - strategic issues. The first part should identify all the most important players in the competitive environment, divided by their role in the value chain into customers, competitors, suppliers, partners (eg technology providers) and regulators. In addition, if a company operates in multiple markets, all of them should be defined - by geographic location, by customer segments, product lines, or all of the above. Finally, the categories of the taxonomy should include all strategic issues that represent the concepts, themes, trends, and other strategic priorities of the current strategy.

The general structure of an effective taxonomy (the list of elements of the external business environment that affect the organization) can be deduced from Figure 6, which illustrates the competitive environment.

• Competitors, customers, suppliers, partners, regulators
• Geographic regions, customer segments and product lines
• strategic questions.

Example: Monitoring Market Trends at Rettig Rettig is a group of companies controlled by the Rettig family for over 200 years. The group's activities cover a wide range of sectors of the economy: from the production of heating appliances to logistics. To effectively monitor the market of such a diversified structure, it is essential to accurately define the competitive environment and strategic issues. Rettig's taxonomy includes many key categories from the supply chain and the industry as a whole, such as raw material prices and consumer trends. This allows management to anticipate market events in advance and gives additional time to make decisions.

Based on considerable experience, we provide below a number of tips for creating an effective taxonomy.

• The strategy outlines the range of information relevant for market monitoring. The taxonomy should reflect the context defined by the company's strategy and should be suitable for inferring the strategy itself.
• Use a universal taxonomy tailored to the needs of individual departments of the company. The taxonomy should reflect the company-wide context and give a general idea of ​​it, bringing together information from various departments. It should reflect the company's external business environment rather than its internal organizational structure.
• Don't create too many categories. Carefully evaluate the usefulness of each in terms of what it says to the leader. Rarely used and unused categories, as well as outdated and incomprehensible to management, it makes no sense to use. If your taxonomy has more than a hundred categories, it's worth considering.
• It is necessary to understand the difference between the processes of formulating and implementing strategies. Most market monitoring systems are designed to help implement strategies. When creating taxonomies for strategic planning, a number of special factors must be taken into account, which we will discuss in the last chapter of the article.

Taxonomy as a tool is useful at all stages of market monitoring. By reflecting the company's strategic context and priorities, it helps to identify and filter information. At the processing stage, when content is turned into an analytical result, tags allow you to effectively group content units and link pieces of information together into a more distinct structure that allows you to draw analytical conclusions. Such knowledge structures at the stage of referral to executives are drawn up in an appropriate, preferably visual form. As a matter of fact, at this stage, taxonomy plays a paramount role: any piece of content must be relevant and presented in the proper form so that managers can search, combine and visualize content, links between individual categories and units, better understanding the business environment as a whole, and not just parts of it.

Collaboration and social networks

The rapid growth in the intensity of social interaction on the Internet also opens up new opportunities for us in the field of market monitoring. While the basic monitoring model outlined above is linear in structure, information sharing can (and ideally should) be much more complex. There are at least three reasons for the complexity of the process:

• Emergence of new types of information sources (social networking sites)
• Internal signals coming directly from end users can form a feedback loop
• Collaboration in the form of discussing market signals can lead to new conclusions

Let's take a look at each of these possibilities.

The most obvious benefit of social networks lies in the possibility of using them as additional sources of information. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and many other networks contain data on competitor activity, consumer trends, and other potentially important issues. However, it must be remembered that the information obtained from these sources is based on open discussions between people and, as such, must always be checked for reliability, which somewhat complicates the stage of its processing.

Case Study: Monitoring Outotec Blogs and Forums Outotec is one of the world leaders in solutions, technologies and services for the mining and metallurgical industries. Outotec's CMP system, which initially used a wide range of information sources, was to be extended to open social networks. After piloting blogs and forums on related topics, the company became convinced that they could indeed be a source of valuable information, and decided to monitor them, providing regular reports to decision-makers on the main trends, topics and opinions appearing in these sources.

In addition, in the market monitoring system itself, a cooperation mechanism can be created using the format of social networks. Some communication channels, such as web interfaces or mobile devices, may be equipped with communication tools that allow the user to comment or rate content, as well as conduct online discussions. This will help to involve decision makers in the market research process and get more information. Thus, channeling market signals to decision makers can generate an influx of additional or internal signals that create a closed feedback loop and enrich the monitoring process.

Example: internal signals in Fujitsu Fujitsu is the largest IT service provider in the world. Over the years, the European division of the company has developed its market monitoring system to maximize the effectiveness of market signaling to management. Realizing the value of internal market signals, the division's analysts have put in place mechanisms to promote collaboration and participation in the process of monitoring end users of market information. By receiving signals from the market monitoring system, end users can also send their own internal signals to it, providing decision-makers with additional food for thought.

Collaboration tools (systems for commenting or discussing market signals) not only create a flow of internal signals, but also provide additional evaluation of the original market signals. Market signals are evaluated already at the source selection stage, and then at the processing stage, but their evaluation and discussion at the stage of sending to decision makers further increases their value. Evaluation tools are widely used in various online systems, but for market monitoring purposes, evaluations that complement the existing tagging mechanism are especially useful. For example, additional context can be created by allowing decision makers to tag information with tags such as "competitive threats" or "business opportunities."

Retail store price monitoring

Is it legal to monitor stores?

According to the legislation of the Russian Federation, prices for goods and services are public information. Not a single piece of legislation prohibits rewriting or photographing the prices of goods in stores.

All actions that are aimed at limiting the ability to monitor prices in stores are illegal. Stickers with a crossed-out camera and prohibitory inscriptions are nothing more than the work of unknown designers and the whim of the store management. However, this can cause many problems.

How to monitor prices and assortment

The main obstacle in collecting information about the assortment and prices of competitors are store guards and employees of the trading floor. Often, if the manager finds out that the staff did nothing to oppose the collection of information by competitors, they are threatened with dismissal.

Act discreetly. So you will not cause trouble to an innocent person and do not add unnecessary problems to yourself. Do not give a reason to suspect you of monitoring neither the guards, nor even their superiors. The following tips will help you do this without being noticed.

Use your phone

Notepad and pen is the worst option. While the best is an ordinary voice recorder with a headset. Use them when gathering information and you will most likely not arouse suspicion. Rarely does anyone pay attention to a person mumbling under his breath.

If you cannot do without photos, do it as discreetly as possible. Use not a soap dish, but a phone with a good camera. A person with a camera in a store attracts more attention than a person with a phone. Be sure to check the flash, it must be turned off.

Make a Monitoring List

Decide in advance with a list of goods whose prices you need to find out in other stores. If you stop at each product indiscriminately, you will definitely be noticed and asked to leave the store. First of all, it is worth monitoring only those products that bring a lot of profit for your store.

Break up work over several days

Make a monitoring plan for the days of the week. Better, for each day, plan to collect information in one department: on Monday - cereals, on Tuesday - sauces, etc.

In the case where it is not possible to spread the collection of information over several days, make your stay in the store as natural as possible. An excellent option in this case would be to combine the collection of information with the purchase of goods for yourself. You can also chat with a sales assistant, portraying an interested buyer, if you do not plan to purchase.

If you are noticed

No matter how hard you try to remain unnoticed, there is always a risk of getting caught. What to do in such cases and how to prevent a flaring conflict?

The main rule - do not conflict. Try to negotiate with the guard, promising to behave discreetly. Many agree, provided that their superiors do not find out about it.

If store employees start a conflict

In the case when a security guard or a sales assistant screams and is rude, the rule is the same: do not get involved in a conflict. Just apologize and leave the store. Having entered into a conflict, you are unlikely to be able to finish monitoring on that day. But the store employees will definitely remember you, and a second attempt to collect information will also turn into a failure.

In cases where it was not possible to discreetly collect price data, and the store staff does not make concessions to you, you can try to get information “shaking rights”. But you should carefully prepare for this and study the answers to the most common objections.

1. The store is private property. Even if this is true, the inviolability of private property is legally protected. When photographing goods, you do not use or damage them, which means that you do not commit any illegal acts. Stand your ground. You can try to lie that you are a student and you need prices for writing a term paper.
2. "Prices are a trade secret." The main criterion for determining a trade secret is limited access to it. Everything that is a secret must be hidden behind seven locks and only persons included in the list can have access to it, otherwise such an object is not a secret. This may be a warehouse, security room, other office space, store documents. Well, the product on the counter and its price tag do not fall under the criterion of secrecy. As much as the store managers would not like it.

Well, and a way for the most daring "spies" - during the conflict, offer the store administration to call the police to fix the offense and draw up a protocol. Considering that there is not a single legislative act prohibiting fixing prices in a store, and internal rules store cannot be contrary to applicable law, you will most likely be left alone.

If there are few monitoring products and they are relatively cheap, you can simply buy them. Nobody can forbid it.

Transfer of monitoring to outsourcing

If you have no one to send as a guerrilla to a nearby store, you can look for companies that provide monitoring services for grocery stores and markets. But this approach can cost you much more than the salary of an employee specifically hired to perform this function. Moreover, if only one employee is engaged in regular monitoring, it is likely that he will become familiar to the staff of other stores, he will be prevented from collecting information.

This problem can be solved by using the services of ordinary students, teenagers or retirees. When choosing a contractor, consider the specifics of the goods that need to be monitored. An elderly woman in a department selling unicycles will look at least suspicious, but in an ordinary supermarket she may go unnoticed.

Look for your ways

Have you noticed that competitors in your store are also monitoring? Take the first step towards solving common problems. The next time a security guard sees a person taking photos or rewriting prices, ask them to let you know right away.

Approach this person, introduce yourself and ask what store he is from. Then try to negotiate to provide pricing data in exchange for the same information from their store. In this case, you will get a minimum number of failures, because everyone wants to make their work easier.

For the same purpose, you can directly contact the managers of competitors and offer them an exchange of information. In case of refusal, you can try to negotiate with someone from the staff for a monetary reward to provide you with information on prices.

Internet price monitoring

How is price monitoring done manually?

If there is no automated price monitoring, then everything is done manually using Excel. Employees of the marketing department with a certain frequency generate reports with the prices of goods. 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 automation options in order to offload their employees and obtain better and faster data.

Project requirements analysis

Before starting another price monitoring project, it would be good to discuss the following points. What sites do you 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 price monitoring 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 an up-to-date database of trade offers.
• It should be remembered that there are stores that are presented on the Market, but there are also those that are not located there. We also note that stores may not place their entire product catalog in Yandex.Market, but only a part of it.
• Yandex.Market provides partner and content access to its database via API. This will be discussed later.

It is also important to find out the number of goods, the prices of which need to be analyzed. If this is an online store, then usually the number of products starts from 10 thousand and reaches several tens of thousands. If we are talking about a 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 goods, a strategy will be formed in accordance with which the task will be solved.

Partner access to the Yandex.Market API for price monitoring

This option is available if you have an active online store account in Yandex.Market.
Restrictions:
- available prices 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).

Content access to the Yandex.Market API

The ability of a particular 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 out, a response will be sent about the possibility of using the corresponding access by the client. With such access, you can receive trade offers from the Market in real time by making appropriate requests to the API.

Restrictions: No. There are limits on the number of API requests per second. But these restrictions do not affect the requirements in any way.

When used: when there is access to a specific API and it is enough to fetch information from Yandex.Market.

Parsing prices of stand-alone sites by link

The meaning of this option is that a price list is formed with links to product cards, from which prices will be extracted.

Limitations: you need to generate an excel file manually, and this takes a lot of time.

Formation of the price list

The simplest and in some cases the most effective way to solve the monitoring problem is to collect articles and their prices in a two-column excel price list.
To solve the problem in this way, it is necessary to bypass all categories on the source site, and in them bypass all the goods and prices for them, at the end forming a price list.
Limitations: development is required for each specific source site.

Advantages: maximum work accuracy.

Disadvantages: requires processing the entire source site.

Parsing prices of stand-alone sites through search

Since there are a lot of products for analysis, and it takes a lot of time to compile a matrix of links to products, you have to solve the problem through the search system on the source site. Here the workflow is as follows. Typically, the product name or SKU is inserted into the search query field on the source site and the search is launched. Then the output results are analyzed. The first link to the product card is used to extract the price, which will then be included in the resulting report.

Limitations: development is required for each source site. The quality of the search depends on the strings that are passed for searching to the source site, and on the quality of the search engine itself on the source site, over which the developer has no influence.

When used: when processing price lists from 500 items.

Each of the described methods for solving the price monitoring problem has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think that the approaches described above will help you solve the problems of price monitoring as efficiently as possible.

Services for parsing prices in online stores

You can hire an analyst on staff or outsource the task, but in both cases, man-hours will be expensive. For small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford extra people, especially when it comes to expensive qualified specialists, the best solution is to turn to high technologies for help, namely, to services with which you can independently receive detailed analytics in real-time is simple, and most importantly, cheap. Consider a few basic packages that will suit most.

Competera

Helps retailers to collect and analyze data on prices, assortment and marketing activities of competitors directly from the websites of online stores or marketplaces - Yandex.Market, Google Shopping, Amazon and eBay. Subscription price with daily monitoring starts from $114.

A joint case with a large retailer showed that pricing automation allows a category manager to increase profitability at the level of a single category and the entire assortment, while saving up to 60 minutes a day on repricing products.

The first screen of the cabinet shows positions that require the manager's immediate attention. The Price Index report analyzes assortment intersections and the dynamics of competitors' price changes for the selected monitoring period. This will help to understand which of the competitors and how it affects the sales of the store.

From here, you can go to any of the reports and see the state of the system, for example, the status of scanning competitors or the number of products in monitoring. The display of reports is configured individually for each manager, depending on the needs.

The screenshot shows the history of price changes in the form of a graph that helps track critical points in the store's pricing policy. Similar charts are available separately for any product category or brand.

The service generates an offer of the best price based on changes in the market and repricing rules pre-installed by the store of any level of complexity. In three clicks, management receives prices that help achieve its goals: increase turnover and marginality or optimize the warehouse.

Competera Pricing Platform, available in Russian and English, integrates with ERP and BI systems, as well as with other tools using the API.

With the help of smart pricing, in addition to standard functions, you can predict potential price changes and highlight useful marketing, assortment, purchasing and other business-friendly solutions.

Metacommerce

Metacommerce collects and analyzes prices, assortment and availability of goods, however, for a fee, you can expand this list and completely reconfigure the interface for yourself. Such options are more suitable for large retailers and are not cheap, and for small and medium businesses there are two cheaper packages. Real-time reports with a personal account and basic data collection parameters start at $750. You can also order periodic price monitoring analytics, it will cost from $75.

Data visualization in Metacommerce is only tabular. To draw conclusions, you have to dive into the numbers.

The advantages of the service include the number of analyzed competitors and prices: in Metacommerce there are much more of them already in the minimum package, and in the optimal package for $750, the number of lots is not limited at all.

Pentagon

Austrian service, in which, in addition to standard features, the creators promise to soon introduce a notification of a sharp change in prices on the market.

Pentagon offers three plans for $109, $159 and $509 per month. They differ from each other in the frequency of price updates (in the cheapest version it happens once a week, and in the rest - daily) and the range of pricing history (30, 90 and 360 days, respectively). The number of competitors is limited here: information can be obtained from a maximum of five stores to choose from.

The service positions itself as a dumping tracking tool. In addition to the standard pricing and assortment analysis, Z-Price promises to identify those who trade at prices lower than those recommended in the market. In addition, the service calculates "gray suppliers", in their search the program starts from goods that are not officially supplied to your region. Analogues have similar opportunities, but Z-Price puts special emphasis on them.

Data can be downloaded from the system in Microsoft Excel and CSV formats, and for a fee, Z-Price offers to expand this list according to the needs of the client.

WisePricer

If you are targeting the Western market, WisePricer is the right choice for you. It collects pricing data from the world's largest online retailers and auctions such as Amazon, Best Buy, eBay and more. But what is most valuable, he himself tells you who your main competitors are. After all, in fact, these are not always those whom you might think.

The service works only in English. A convenient “response system” tells you which positions and what measures you should take in order to work more efficiently: get more profit, purchases, loyalty. To do this, just click on the orange area in the diagram above - and the service will display a table of critical positions. For example, if your prices are too low.

Tables can be customized: add and remove fields, for example, minimum and maximum price values, product link or import date.

The minimum package will cost €699 (no more than 15,000 positions across three competitors) per month. You can use it for 14 days for free during the trial period.

Analysis of the competitive environment

When should you do a competitive analysis?

1. When you are only planning your business. At this stage, knowing your competitors will allow you to develop a product, determine its key product characteristics, develop a product policy, determine a price, predict a sales plan, and develop a promotion strategy.
2. When conduct a holistic marketing research . Competitive analysis is part of it. In the study, the information obtained is further used for SWOT analysis, for the subsequent selection of a competitive strategy and marketing strategy the company as a whole.
3. When competitor monitoring has become a regular event. It is important to treat competitor analysis not as a project, but as a process. In this case, you will always have at hand the answer to questions such as: “How do your competitors’ products differ from yours (product features, price)?”, “From what sources does a competitor get new customers?”, “How do competitors provide conversion and retain existing customers? This knowledge and benchmarking (adoption of industry best practices) will help optimize resources for marketing activities.

Periodicity analysis depends on the specifics of the business, in dynamic highly competitive markets, we usually recommend performing work every three months, in calmer markets - once every six months or a year.

If you are working for the first time, then identify two or three main competitors and analyze them completely. Next time, update information about already known companies, add 1-3 new companies, revise the list of criteria for comparison.

The analysis is conveniently carried out in a spreadsheet. In this file, on one axis we set aside the names of competing companies, on the other - the comparison criteria. Using such a table, it is convenient to compare data and track the dynamics and general industry trends.

Direct and indirect competitors

Competitors can be direct or indirect. You need to look at both.

Direct competitors- these are companies whose characteristics of activity (product, geography) largely coincide with the characteristics of your business. Such companies are usually well-known, and their activity is tracked at an informal level.

First of all, you need to decide on the geography of the analysis. If you have a veterinary clinic, then the geography will be limited to your area of ​​the city or locality with adjacent territories. If you are working on a federal scale, then for each priority region you need to consider both your federal colleagues and regional players.

Indirect competitors- this is:

1. Foreign companies, from which you can often adopt non-standard marketing moves, of course, with a discount on the national characteristics of your consumers.
2. Indirect competitors are companies operating in a different price segment or producing alternative goods and services. For example, for a beauty salon, professional cosmetics stores will be indirect competitors.
3. Potential competitors are companies that can become direct competitors under certain conditions. Such a condition could be optimization of the unique selling proposition (USP),

   First you need to get general marketing data about competitors. If a company takes care of its image and reputation, this information can be easily obtained on its website.

   

   I will note two points:

   • prices are usually on the site, otherwise they can be requested during the project (although in the case of complex b2b products, they are very difficult to obtain);
   • the degree of popularity of the company and product can be assessed using the Yandex.Wordstat service. For example, by entering the phrase “toothpaste” into the service, you will quickly find out which is more popular - Splat or Lacalut.

   Site analysis

   To evaluate usability, you can use characters and scenarios- we imagine ourselves as a consumer of the company's product / service and evaluate how quickly and easily the target action can be performed on the site.

   If the target audience often uses gadgets, the site should display well on mobile devices. It is advisable to evaluate what triggers are used to stimulate purchases.

   Reviews play an important role in making buyers' buying decisions, so you need to see if the site contains cases, recommendations, portfolio, photos of completed projects.

   For topics with an extensive range, it is useful to see how a competitor presents the catalog, which filters and segments. For example, on the website of an online store for children's goods, these are filters by gender, age, height, by brands, by season of the year (winter, spring, summer, autumn).

   The next criterion is the use feedback forms: online consultant, Skype, Viber, Whatsapp. Perhaps the site uses non-standard services, convenient calculators, Personal Area, which makes the user's interaction with the site more convenient.

   SEO

   With SEO analysis, it is advisable to start analyzing the marketing activity of competitors. Of course, a complex technical usability audit is the lot of specialists, but you can quickly assess the degree of attention to SEO in two ways - by positions in search engines, which are checked manually or using automatic services, and traffic.

   Of course, the counters are now closed for everyone, but attendance can be assessed in the following ways:

   • if Liveinternet, Mail.Ru or Rambler counters are installed, then you can use them to see the place in the ranking and daily attendance;
   • if the site is relatively popular, traffic can be estimated with a certain error using the SimilarWeb service;
   • Attendance can be assessed by indirect signs:
   • by the number of views of videos posted on the site;
   • by the number of views of the material, which is displayed in some modes, mainly on news sites;
   • by the difference in identification numbers of orders, which are automatically assigned when filling out feedback forms and come in a written notification to the author of the application.

   Developments

   Information that a company organizes or participates in an event can be found either in its news feed or on thematic resources.

   Competitors may also hold unusual events, the experience of using which it is sometimes advisable to adopt. For example, the home Internet provider Dom.ru held children's parties in the yards last summer. There was music, animators worked, and at the end, parents were asked to fill out application forms to join.

   Industry Resources

   When analyzing the work of competitors with industry resources, it is necessary to assess what resources the company uses, what content and how often it posts, whether it works with paid resources and with discount services.

   Email marketing

   To evaluate the company's email marketing, you need to subscribe to the newsletter. Criteria for analysis:

   • Do emails actually come after subscribing to the newsletter?
   • Is it possible to unsubscribe from the newsletter?
   • Is there a segmentation of the target audience? This becomes clear at the time of subscription, when the author of the newsletter asks to clarify your interest in products or your socio-demographic characteristics.
   • What algorithm does the competitor use in terms of email sequencing logic? For example, is there a chain of welcome emails; trigger emails accompanying the conversion, etc.
   • What content is contained in the newsletter and how interesting and useful is it for customers?
   • Is the mailing targeted (in the body of the letter you are addressed by name)?
   • Does the mailing list offer unique bonuses and discounts that cannot be found in other information channels of the company?
   • What mailing service does your competitor use?
   • How does the company collect customer addresses, how are the forms placed on the site, and what bonuses does the company promise in case of subscription?

   Blogs and social networks

   Questions for analyzing blogs and activity in the social networks of a competitor:

   • What company uses networks? Whether these are traditional networks like Vkontakte and Facebook or specialized networks for special content - Slideshare for presentations, a professional network Linkedin, Instagram for photo, Youtube- for video, etc.
   • Is the target audience segmented in social networks?
   • What is the theme of the content in each of the networks?
   • What is the quality of the content and how often is it posted?
   • What are the quantitative indicators of work: the number of subscribers, likes, how often do users share company posts?
   • How much does the company seek to captivate subscribers in communication? How does he respond to comments? Does it offer contests or surveys?
   • How does it work with negativity and how to neutralize it?
   • Does the company use non-standard social media features, such as creating customized menus in

To make effective decisions in the field of sales, it is necessary to obtain and systematize all the necessary information. This contributes sales monitoring. A special role here is played by the database of the company's customers who have or have ever had business relations with the company. Practice shows that it is advisable to divide the company's buyers into six types:

Existence of existing business relations - working buyers; potential buyers; idle clients; other contractors;

The volume of average monthly purchases of products - large customers; average clients; minor clients;

Frequency of purchases of products - regularly purchasing - 2-3 times a month; constantly purchasing - 1 time per month; relatively constantly purchasing - less than once a month; periodically purchasing - 1 time in 2-3 months;

The region of the company's location - by the region of the company's location according to all-Russian classifier regions, classification is possible taking into account the index of the region's prospects for this particular product or product group;

Type of the main purchased goods - group of goods A; product group B; product group B; product group D, etc.;

The specifics of the distribution of the client - wholesale companies; companies that deliver to shops and other retail outlets; companies with mixed distribution; retail chains.

To assess the situation, the management of the sales department must, first of all, know what product and where it is sold: to which region, to which company. For these purposes, relevant reports are generated, for example, by region (Table 10.6).

Table 10.6. Sales volume of a sales manager by regions

The report data allows you to see which sales of goods prevailed in a particular region, which regions were leaders in terms of sales in general and for individual groups of goods. If you have data on the market capacity of a particular region for a group of goods, you can easily calculate the company's market share in the region. As a rule, at the end of the report, two more indicators are indicated, the plan for the month and the percentage of its implementation. This data makes it possible, if the plan is not fulfilled, based on the analysis of sales in the regions, to understand where the supply failed, which region is problematic, and then find out why.

Each sales manager should have information about sales opportunities in the region - its potential. The potential of the region should be compared with the level of average monthly sales, which will determine the percentage of use of the region's potential and draw the necessary conclusions (Table 10.7).

In order to increase the level of using the potential of the region, sales managers must visit the regions assigned to the manager, in which: there are no sales at all; there was a decline in sales by more than 20%; there are potential large customers; there is a high sales potential.

The ability to timely receive up-to-date information about the state of affairs in the region depends on the activity of the manager, the frequency and frequency of contacts with clients. The number of manager's contacts is determined by the importance of the client for the company: for large - at least four contacts per month; for medium - at least three; for small ones - at least two; for minor ones - at least one contact per month.

Table 10.7. Using the sales potential in the regions

With successful and planned work with a client, the frequency of contacts can be regulated by the manager who oversees work with this company. Many companies emphasize the application of the “4: 2: 1” principle - in large companies, the manager should call four times more often than in small ones, in medium ones - twice as often.

The right frequency of communication with the client allows you to "keep abreast" of regional problems, keep abreast of events and quickly respond to changing market conditions. This is especially important in today's competitive markets, where there are many dynamic companies that are capable of active and effective actions.

Determining the criteria for the effectiveness of sales of certain commodity items is usually carried out on the basis of a separate study on specific company data. In this case, the share of this product group in the total sales volume, sales speed inventory, the value of profitability of sales. The achievement of a certain market share in certain product groups can be considered a criterion for the success of work in a particular region. At the same time, for a more accurate assessment of the state of affairs, several indicators should be used, including the dynamics of turnover in a given region and the company's share in total sales of these products in this region, the presence of products in the most famous and visited retail outlets, etc.

In conditions market economy competition is a necessary stimulus for development. To enter the market new company should assess their prospects and opportunities. An already existing organization regularly conducts competitor monitoring to develop your strategy. To carry out such a process, several different techniques are used.

Purpose of monitoring

Market monitoring (competitors in a specific industry) is produced for a specific purpose. It is clearly stated at the beginning of the study. This allows you to collect information in a targeted manner. To do this, at the first stage of work, the analyst determines the circle of main competitors, as well as the scope of their activities in the market.

Conducting an analysis of the main players allows you to accumulate and process information about their strengths and weaknesses, as well as about the direction of development in the future. The real opportunities and existing goals of competitors are evaluated. Such work allows you to increase the efficiency of your company.

Directions

May be required to determine your own current or strategic goals. This process is carried out when positioning your own product on the market, forecasting sales volume.

Also, such actions are carried out when developing a new line of goods or services, implementing an implementation policy. Based on the data obtained, prices are set, the primary characteristics of the goods are selected. This allows you to increase sales revenue and profit.

Peculiarities

It is a process of collecting and analyzing information about the company's business environment. At the same time, the behavior of not only competitors, but also consumers, suppliers, dealers, scientific developers, as well as market regulation mechanisms is considered.

The collection of information about the main subjects of the industry began to develop actively at the end of the last century. The main provisions developed by economists at that time are relevant today. The amount of information that analysts need to process to understand the situation of the business environment has changed. Automation of this process somewhat simplified the work of the analytical service. However, the human factor for this process remains very important. This allows you to obtain reliable information, increasing the effectiveness of research and strategy development in general.

Problems

In modern world Internet competitor monitoring is becoming widespread. However, qualitative analysis cannot be based solely on data from various sites and publications. There are several main problems with monitoring. First of all, it is necessary to note the large flow of information. Filtering becomes difficult.

Also, the quality of monitoring may be affected by the irrelevance of incoming data, the impossibility of setting one's strategy based on the information received. It comes sometimes in a very expanded or fuzzy form. In some cases, market monitoring cannot reflect the real development processes of the main industry players. Also a negative factor is the secrecy of important information. Competitors carefully monitor the leakage of information in key strategic areas.

Existing data collection methods can reduce the impact of negative factors. Its quality is more affected by the lack of understanding of the connection between the information received and the development of the right strategy.

Management strategy

According to a certain scheme, it is produced in large companies monitoring. Competitor analysis produced according to a developed and tested system. Large companies develop their own unique methods of conducting such a process over time. If the approach developed by an organization to collect data on the business environment is effective, it is used for a long time. However, it is rather difficult to clearly articulate its specific benefits. In the process of doing research, it is important to understand the relationship between the management strategy and the chosen approach to analysis.

The manager conducts the strategy setting process in two main steps. At the first stage, the direction of development is formulated, an assessment of one's own capabilities is given, and alternatives are analyzed in the future. At the same time, goals are set, the mission of the company is determined.

At the second stage, the developed action plan is implemented. It is the process of monitoring the business environment that makes it possible to formulate and implement strategic goals. Initially, analysts should set up a data collection process to formulate a promising direction for development. After that, the whole system is expanded and can be implemented.

Deep Scan

Various goals can be pursued competitor monitoring. Program is developed taking into account the interests of the company and the characteristics of the market. For a global, thorough analysis, the method of M. Porter is used. It involves data collection once every 3-5 years. It's laborious but sufficient effective technique. It is divided into five stages.

Initially, the study is carried out in the direction of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the main market players. At the second stage, their goals and motivation are determined. The third stage involves the designation of the current strategies of competitors. Its current position in the market is being studied, as well as current actions aimed at increasing profits.

The fourth stage further deepens the analyst into the essence of the structure of the competitive environment. At this stage, it is necessary to study the player's understanding of his position in the industry, his satisfaction with his position. At the fifth stage, the players' actions are predicted. This is the most responsible process, which involves using all the information received earlier.

Annual analysis

Monitoring of competing companies should be done not only every few years. Constant control allows you to respond in time to changing market trends. For this, a simpler technique is used. The study is carried out once a year.

During this analysis, a general description of the competition of the industry is given, its development is predicted. To do this, specialists draw up a special map of the business environment. Direct, key and indirect competitors are designated. They compare their own range of goods, pricing, distribution, image. The channels of product promotion are also analyzed.

When conducting an annual analysis, they study the commitment of consumers, their awareness of the company's products. The technologies used by competitors are compared with their own developments, and a SWOT analysis is made. The quality of own resources is assessed. On the basis of the conducted research, the strengths and weaknesses of their own organization and the main market participants are established.

Sources of information

It involves collecting information from various sources. It is not recommended to use only one direction of data acquisition. In this case, the result of the study may be incomplete or unreliable.

Consumer surveys are the main sources of information. The opinions of various target groups are studied qualitatively and quantitatively. Analysts get data from points of sale. Here the quality of the display of goods, promotions, assortment and prices are determined.

On the Internet, you can also get some information about competitors. Surveys of industry experts also make it possible to draw certain conclusions about the state of the business environment. Obtaining information from sales managers is also one of the fairly reliable methods. Persons responsible for the promotion of goods in stores can provide complete information about the developments of competitors.

Industry reviews provide reports on financial performance, ratings of companies in the industry. These are key characteristics of the industry's business environment. Visiting thematic exhibitions, seminars helps to understand the communication strategy of the main market players.

Market Signals

Can use information of varying degrees of certainty. M. Porter introduced into the management process such a concept as market signals. It means any action in the business environment that competitors take. It can indicate directly or indirectly the intentions of a market participant, his internal situation.

Market signals can also be determined by the actions of buyers, suppliers or other participants. Each event gives its resonance in the business environment. Monitoring captures these signals. They are processed, the probability of a certain event is estimated and transferred to the company's management for making strategic decisions.

Depending on the goals of monitoring, analysts can work with events that have already occurred or consider signals that indicate the possible actions of competitors in the future. Major competitors make decisions based on data that no one else in the industry has yet. This allows you to take a large share of the market before competitors do.

Price monitoring

Many companies today choose to monitor their prices from a variety of strategies for collecting data on competitors. This allows you to assess the situation in the market. This approach allows you to identify participants who seek to increase sales while reducing prices or, conversely, stimulate profits by selling expensive products. Some participants have non-price methods of expanding sales. For this, it is produced competitor store monitoring and outlets for their products.

This monitoring involves consideration of price options when the volume of the order changes (wholesale, retail price), as well as an assessment of stocks. For example, the Rettig group of companies has been operating for over 200 years. Its range of activities includes various areas (from logistics to the production of heaters). Such a diversified structure is in dire need of an accurate definition of strategic issues and trends in the business environment. To do this, the group of companies is constantly studying the prices of raw materials, terms of supply, consumer preferences. Based on monitoring prices and other methods, it is possible to predict the development of events in the future.

Scenarios

In order to monitor competitors' prices, a company may choose to use one of the data collection scenarios. In accordance with the chosen methodology, the employee learns the necessary information directly in the store.

Different levels of awareness require the researcher to competitor monitoring. Example such a scenario could be as follows. A company employee comes to a competitor's store. He reports a desire to make a large order. Based on the average level of knowledge in this area, he learns the information of interest.

Another scenario defines the role of the researcher as an inexperienced customer. This is a less efficient way. It allows you to learn about price, non-price ways to expand the competitor's sales market.

If the researcher turns to a competitor as a knowledgeable person, he will be able to find out deeper, more detailed information.

Considering how it happens competitor monitoring, the company can form and implement its development strategy, win a large market share.

About the service Audit of outlets and Retail Monitoring

Comment of experts "Consulting Growth": The purpose of this service is to conduct a study of the appropriate availability of goods in retail chains and stores, compare prices and pricing policies with competitors, check the quality of product display, merchandising, the quality of work with your product from the side sales staff. So-called "Retail Audit". Contact is carried out in the mode of a personal visit (retail auditor, retail auditor) One of the types of audit rites is the so-called. Retail Monitoring (retail monitoring, monitoring trading network, monitoring distribution channels). Service Retail Monitoring (retail monitoring, retail network monitoring, distribution channel monitoring) includes conducting a census of products (trade category or group of categories for all SKUs presented on the shelves) based on a pre-prepared questionnaire. Recorded information: product name, manufacturer name, packaging, price, special price and discounts, availability of additional promotional materials at the point of sale, product location on the shelf (merchandising), etc.

According to intelligence (monitoring prices of competitors)

One of the most effective tools business is price management. Often it is price policy allows the company to survive in the face of a fierce struggle for the buyer. Market research results show that among those consumers who are ready to change the supplier of industrial equipment and tools, one third names low prices as a decisive factor in choosing a new supplier. Practice shows that the fate of a multi-thousandth contract can be decided in the simplest way - by lowering the price.

To insure against the unexpected, many businesses use competitor price monitoring. Monitoring allows you to track the price situation on the market, identify those participants who seek to increase sales by reducing equipment prices, as well as those suppliers who raise prices, which means that they have effective non-price methods of sales promotion in their arsenal.

The list of standard price monitoring information includes the following information:

1. Price options depending on the volume of the order.
2. Size of warehouse stocks.
3. Delivery time.
4. Conditions for obtaining additional discounts.

Practice collection price information shows that the main difficulty is usually the comparison of prices for equipment with different technical parameters and characteristics. Sometimes the sellers themselves cannot bring all the available information into a single system. Therefore, the main task of price monitoring is not so much the collection of price information as a clear and correct classification of the information received. A simple solution to the problem of equipment classification was the construction of an assortment map. The presentation of data is based on grouping equipment according to one or two key technical parameters (power, productivity, strength, etc.), on the one hand, and trademarks of manufacturers, on the other. Prices, which are written opposite the corresponding columns and rows in different fonts depending on the discount option, are a kind of "third dimension" of the assortment card. The analytical function of the assortment map can be strengthened by introducing additional information, for example, stock availability or equipment delivery times1. Information on all suppliers, summarized in one table, is easy to visually analyze. The breadth, depth or specialization of the company's product range becomes obvious. Consideration of changes in the map over time allows us to draw objective conclusions about the successes and problems of promoting certain trademarks products.

A large amount of information, changes in market conditions, possible unreliability or lack of price lists at all create problems for employees of enterprises in maintaining the relevance and reliability of data. The relevance of the data is determined by the frequency of monitoring. And the reliability depends on the technique of collecting information.

Extensive monitoring experience has made it possible to identify both possible tactics of "information retrieval" and appropriate protective measures.

Below are the three most common monitoring scenarios by enterprise specialists, the so-called “researchers” (“clients”), and possible countermeasures by the so-called “respondents” (“specialists”, “sellers”):

1) "Boss" tactics;

2) tactics "Little fool";

3) the tactics of the "Specialist ("Nahala")".

BOSS TACTICS

In order to achieve an atmosphere of trust and interest on the part of the Respondent, the Researcher offers a specific, but fictitious situation regarding the need to complete a large, expensive order, sometimes speaking on behalf of a company with a well-known name, for example: “I need to make signs and design our stores located in various parts of the city. Can you fulfill such an order?

The scenario then plays out as follows. The Researcher invites the Specialist to a conversation, allegedly to discuss and clarify some points of the order, while not having deep professional knowledge, he can use specific terminology and operate with technical parameters and characteristics in order to “talk” to the Specialist. A specialist is usually passionate about his profession and can easily get carried away by the content of the conversation ...

When the Respondent tries to get clarifications, details or the desired technical characteristics of the “ordered” equipment, the Researcher is forced to retreat, since the skills of a professional “contactee” are not always accompanied by deep knowledge of the subject of the conversation: “I want to hear all these points from you, because you are the specialist! Be kind, offer me your options, make the necessary calculations, and I will be happy to get acquainted with this.

The respondent, of course, tries to present as much information as possible, demonstrate his competence and retain a potential buyer.

In this regard, quite often the Researcher is faced with the following problems, involuntarily created by the Respondent, but which should be taken into service by anyone who wants to keep a trade secret and recognize the “real” Client:

* the interactions of the “Client” with possible competitors are established: have you worked with someone before, have you already addressed this proposal to someone;
* a meeting is proposed for a more specific discussion of the task, acquaintance with the catalogs of works or equipment of the company, proposals for special working conditions (discounts, etc.);
* requested contact numbers and persons, the exact name of the company;
* information about the addresses of branches, offices, retail outlets of the company is specified;
* they are interested in the name of the head of the company or the names of one of the employees with whom contact was previously established (this situation is often encountered).

In the most common cases, when the Respondent is interested in contact numbers, the Researcher resorts to the following tricks:

* refers to the very large volume of work, the lack of telephone numbers for employees, the “busy” telephone lines and the inability to get through: “Oh, what are you! I'm sorry for your time! Our phone is constantly busy, it is almost impossible to get through. I'll call you myself";
* an atmosphere of some mystery is created, and the Respondent is made to understand that there are many people like him, they “cling” constantly and bother: “I would not like to leave my coordinates yet. Our conversation is preliminary. You will tell me, please, the information that interests me, and then I will resolve this issue”;
* the phone number is left, but it turns out that it is constantly working in autofax mode.

The listed situations may (but not necessarily!) indicate the artificiality of the request, and, accordingly, the fact of monitoring. A sign of a really interested appeal can be the readiness of the Client for two-way communication and a real discussion of the proposals made.

TACTICS "FOR THE FOOL"

The researcher takes the position of a person ignorant in this area, apologizes for his incompetence and asks for help to solve or deal with a difficult task for him.

Often the beginning of the conversation is based on the type of preliminary consultation and a tour of the technical capabilities of the proposed equipment. In this case, approximately the following turns are used: “My husband asked me to find out: do you have the 9th Zhiguli model? How much does it cost? What color is this? And they come with some different systems, what is it? Is there anything cheaper? ..."; “I would like to install air conditioning in the apartment. True, I do not understand them, but they told me that the ZZZ model is good .... ”; “In our garden association, we would like to install telephones. Can you do it? I don't know exactly what you need, but..."

After that, the Researcher, depending on the complexity and specifics of the task, asks either to send a price list for equipment, services, or to calculate the cost of a specific configuration.

Despite the fact that the Researcher has created a "concrete" situation, it is clearly a surrogate one. The Researcher cannot foresee all the nuances in advance, especially since he is not an expert in the area under discussion.

Therefore, the factors complicating the work of such a Researcher may be the following:

* the manager's proposal to get acquainted with the situation on the territory of the customer (inspect the workshop, apartment, area of ​​the garden partnership, etc.);
* questions on technical specifications;
* purpose of using the equipment;
* a proposal to send a commercial application (request) for the required equipment with a statement of tasks;
* reference to the lack of a price list and a proposal to discuss specific needs;
* as well as all the methods indicated above in the "Boss" Tactics.

The researcher counteracts as follows: “I am not competent to solve these issues, my supervisor instructed me to find out the initial information and nothing more”; “I am not aware of the prospects for using this equipment. This is what our partners in the regions need. They asked for more information”; “I should discuss this with my husband,” etc.

It happens that the Respondent provided the information necessary for the Researcher, even received a contact phone number, but when he tries to find out the situation about the intentions of the “Client”, as a rule, he hears the answer: “I gave everything to the manager. The decision is made only by him, nothing depends on me. If we are interested in something, we will call you back.” Such behavior indicates a lack of serious intentions.

In fairness, it must be said that the use of the tactics described by the Researcher can lead to unfavorable results, since he himself limits himself to the limits of incompetence, and therefore, he can no longer independently influence and change the situation. The lack of initiative and mobility just needs to be used by the Seller, that is, not to provide the Client with a full amount of information in such circumstances. The client, who is essentially interested, will definitely take the initiative and try to discuss a number of additional issues and possible options for a future purchase.

TACTICS OF THE "SPECIALIST" ("NAHALA")

At the moment, this is perhaps the most productive and easily applied monitoring tactic, which, at first glance, is difficult to counter.

The researcher is quite clearly aware that the task of any seller is to sell the goods, and it doesn’t matter to whom. This circumstance enables the Researcher to act with maximum confidence and from the very first words "storm" the solution of a particular issue.

The reference model for monitoring, for example, looks like this: “Do you sell compressors? I'm interested in completely different models. Send, please, the price list"; “Tell me, please, do you have water heaters? I need both flowing and storage, different. Send a price list with this information"; “I am interested in welding machines. Do you have anything? Send me a price list, please”, etc.

When analyzing the semantic content of the phrases proposed as examples, one goal can be clearly traced - to get only a price list. The “client” is not interested in the opinion of a specialist and his recommendations, he does not seek contact, otherwise the question would be asked: “With whom could I discuss ...”; "Who can tell..."

Also in this situation, the Seller should definitely pay attention to the complete absence or vagueness of the task, the vagueness of the desires and needs of the "Client".

In such a case, the best way would obviously be to invite him to a more detailed conversation. You can talk to the Client by clarifying the technical characteristics or the need to choose among several brands similar in parameters. You can provoke a conversation with a Client with a simple question: “Do you want it cheaper or more expensive?”. Having talked to the Client, you can check his consistency using all the methods listed above.

Conclusion

In conditions where the budget or time of a marketing specialist is limited, monitoring is practically the only method of collecting and analyzing marketing information. Specialists spend a lot of time and resources gathering information from their colleagues, partners, contractors or competitors. Thus, marketers at enterprises base their activities on the analysis of secondary information. Such an approach is justified if the company needs to catch up or follow the leader and there is something to learn from competitors.

Market leaders always have information that competitors do not have. The source of information for the leader is the consumer. The very principle of dividing marketing information into “primary” and “secondary” already gives reason to think about what is the basis of the advantage - first-hand information or processed information.

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