Learn how to use the Strategic Pricing report on the Acuity Pricing platform.
The Strategic Pricing report enables users to visualise pricing with unique pricing ladders and range planning tools.
Contents:
- Report Tabs
- Report Tabs: Ladder
- Report Tabs: Premiumisation
- Report Tabs: Piano
- Report Tabs: History
- Report Export
- Hints and Tips
Strategic Pricing report
Users can utilise this tool in the platform tool to:
- Compare pricing structures between competitive retailers.
- Uncover price gaps in the market.
- Review their products’ pricing structure, enabling shoppers to trade up through their range.
- Assess the brand hierarchy of categories and how this differs by retailer.
- Understand the effect of promotional events on the range price architecture.
- Identify the least competitively priced products in a retailer’s range.
Report Tabs
Most reports offer tabbed sections, which provide more in-depth results from the given query. Within the Strategic Pricing report there are Ladder, Premiumisation and Piano tabs.
Ladder Tab
The Ladder tab shows the pricing structure in a given category and enables users to see the price variation between their business and a competitor’s business.
If multiple retailers are selected the dark blue dot and price represents the average price of the product across the retailers selected.
Please note that the price is taken from the latest day of the period selected and is not an average of the timeframe selected. It’s most commonly used with one retailer selected.
This report can be used to identify price gaps in the market. The largest price gap is highlighted by the darker blue band and the table above the chart shows the most expensive and least expensive products. For more detail on these items, simply hover the mouse over these products.
The price movement indicator demonstrates price changes within the selected date range.
The current report defaults to show the unit price of products in the market. However, the report can also be filtered to show volume price and attribute pricing within certain categories (e.g. cost per wash or cost per serving). This report can be used to ensure that the value structure of the user’s category remains consistent (e.g. capsules remain more expensive than powder in detergents).
Modifications to this chart are possible through changing the filtering options. To do this, change the granularity (located in the Metrics tab of the filter options) from Products to either Brand or Manufacturer.
With Show: Products selected, click the name or price of the product to navigate to the product dashboard in the Acuity Pricing platform.
To see how unpromoted prices have changed over time, the user should tick the base price option at the top of the page.
Premiumisation Tab
Using the premiumisation functionality, the user can benchmark the price of products against a category, brand, manufacturer or retailer.
Under Premiumisation, select ‘Retailers’ from the dropdown menu and choose the benchmark retailer. Note you will need to ensure that at least two retailers are in your selection. This report is based on data from the user-defined end date.
The benchmarked retailer is shown as the coloured line down the page. The price comparison of the user's competitor retailer is shown on the left and right with green (more expensive) and red (less expensive) marks on the chart.
The chart is extremely valuable when used in conjunction with the Price Index report. Together these reports enable a user to drill down to the exact SKUs that are different in price within a given category (price variation highlighted in the Price Index report).
Benchmark the price by retailer to identify where price points between the retailers differ. Swap between Base/Shelf/Promoted/Was price to see how pricing strategy affects competitiveness. Change this to Brand/Manufacturer to look at competitor benchmarking at a supplier level. When viewing the data in this way, choose one retailer to analyse otherwise the data is an average across your whole selection.
Piano Tab
The Piano tab shows the pricing structure of the category based on the end date in the range. The Pricing Piano allows the user to look at the number of products sold within different pricing clusters in the market.
There are several options available to manipulate the pricing structure (e.g. size of the price gap, analyse by attribute or brand, etc.)
Data on the pricing piano can be analysed within a specified gap. Select the price gap by clicking on the price bands shown. There is an option to see the data as a percentage showing which brand or retailer has the greatest share at a given price point.
History Tab
To access the History tab, click on one of the bars within the graph.
Use the Price Gap option to show the number of products that have been sold at a specific price point (e.g. the round pound).
Strategic Pricing – Hints and Tips
Ladder tab:
- The ladder works best the more granular the data used. We always recommend running the ladder with only one retailer selected.
- The ladder is normally run using base price in order to give a true indication of the price range of a category or group of products. Shelf, Promo and Was Price options should not be discounted completely though as they will give an indication of the impact of promotional activity on the pricing architecture of the category.
Premiumisation tab:
- You can utilise the attributes in Acuity Pricing to assess a smaller portion of the category (attributes are only available at a single category level, and may not be available on all categories).
Piano tab:
- Within the filter options dropdown, use the price range tool to focus in on a particular price range (e.g. £0-£5) to remove outliers on the chart.
- Click on individual bars within the chart to open out the trended product count view chart below.
