How To Scrape Pricing Data For Competitor Price Tracking?

Web scraping techniques to gather competitor pricing data for effective price tracking and market analysis in e-commerce.
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John Doe
John Doe
 | 
26.9.2022

Price scraping empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions and find the optimal balance between profitability and competitiveness.

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Every company adopts new concepts, better pricing methods and finding innovative software to rise above the ordinary. As per a survey, approximately 61% of the customers visit different websites for comparing the prices of products. Thus, it is important for businesses in various fields especially travel and e-commerce to supervise the prices on and across the competitor websites for thousands of products. This helps them make sure that the price they are charging from consumers is competitive. Competitor price comparison helps the business in setting a price point for their products which consumers find attractive. Not just that, the price also needs to fulfill the profitability goals.

It is here that price scraping comes into the picture. Today we will have a detailed look at the benefits of price scraping, analyzing them, understanding the market mechanism and ultimately beating the competition.

However, all the data on the web is not open or readily available to download or even comprehend. But just imagine what all you could do if you had access to the enormous data. Also, get analysis and insights from thorough research. Well, you can get this access with the help of ethical web scraping which will enable you to perform competitor price comparison.

So, let us begin.

What Is Price Scraping?

Price scraping is going through the prices on competitor’s websites with the help of price scraping software offered by PriceIntelGuru, for getting an idea about their pricing strategies. Extraction of prices on the web is beneficial to thee-commerce business along with the financial and hospitality sector. Moreover, price scraping also helps in getting information about the products, reviews, inventory, demands and market trends.

Unlimited data can mean getting lots of irrelevant and relevant information from the internet. Now, price scraping bifurcates the relevant information from the rest. So, getting what you want has price scraping at the core of every process. PriceIntelGuru is the best pricing intelligence company catering distinguished pricing needs of businesses.

Need For Price Scraping

To begin with, the pricing of every business is always particular to their industries. This is not a hidden fact. What’s more interesting is that online retailing has been rising like never before. Making a change in the pricing could mean a big window of opportunity can be missed or grabbed. That crucial pricing can be for your business. For instance, if you are selling a $43 appliance and your competition sells for $42.But instead of dropping the price, you make your customers understand the value you offer, then that can work too. But how to do that without research? Competitor Price scraping can help you know better.

The global e-commerce market consists of millions of stores and the number is increasing with each passing day. This increases the level of competition as well. The finance, travel, and other industries can face challenges with this price change happening every second.

Scraping price from competitor websites enables any business to understand market dynamics as well as attract buyers who are sensitive to price. It can be done by setting lower prices than the baseline prices in the market. It goes without saying that most of the consumers are price sensitive i.e., they look for the lowest price for desired product. You need to think ahead of the competition if you want to attract the shoppers to buy from you.

It is not practical to manually access the prices from thousands of websites and then use them for competitor price tracking. Thus, it is important to use web scraping to simplify your job. It can be said that price scraping can help any business in influencing the decision of buyers.

Advantages Of Competitor Price Scraping

1.  Real Time Competitor Analysis

In the price-sensitive market, it is extremely important to focus on competitor analysis. More or less, it is always assumed that your customers are influenced by the pricing. This helps in keeping up with the competition. Scraping prices from the web and further analyzing them will help businesses in adjusting their prices and profit margins when the time is right. This will also help in improving the sales figures.

There are situations where prices change frequently and hence real-time web

price scraping is required. Thus, there is no more need to run the scraper at frequent intervals. This means immediate response and efficient analysis. Real-time price scraping saves from downloading and storing the data. Competitor Price scraping helps in providing the price in real-time. Consistently changing prices according to your requirement helps in dealing with the time gap in which the user may or not switch to your products. Also, it can help you in changing the strategy of selling with the help of real-time tracking. That is more fruitful than just participating in price wars.

2.  Determining Price Strategy

Customers browse through hundreds and thousands of products before landing on your website. In order to convert these customers you need to implement a pricing strategy. It is the effectiveness of your pricing strategy which will decide the profit and revenue of your business. A pricing strategy that is customer-centric and also generates revenue. How can that be done? With an effective price scraping method.

Unless you operate in a monopolistic market, you need to be aware of the competition so that you can set the pricing strategy accordingly. After all, people follow just one rule when it comes to e-commerce, compare and buy it. Scraping the competitor prices offers a better view of the competitor’s pricing so that you can determine yours. The price strategies are implemented with an aim to attract the customers by offering low prices on products and services as compared to the competitors for striking a better deal. Now, these offers can be different from the competition or almost at par. But the main difference will be created by your brand. And positioning a brand that delivers quality and also in a better price can be tricky. Price scraping helps you in doing exactly that.

3.  Analytics

Consumer behavior is much deeper a concept than we could think. Everything matters when it comes to a customer’s choice. It would be easy to sell products to customers if businesses could understand how customers think, where they can change their buying decision and how those customers can be retained. It is data analytics which can come to your rescue here.

With the help of analytics, you can track the shopping patterns of customers. It helps in knowing what they shop for and what they have on their wish list. The moment the prices of products they want drop, they may buy the product. Reports on price trends, competitor margins, and demand trends can also be created. You can draw historical data for analyzing future trends as well as forecasting future demands.

Web scraping software can be classified into two categories:
  1. The software which run from the cloud and can be accessed with a browser/ browser extension
  2. The software can be installed and run from a local computer.

The choice of software depends on your specific business needs.

Who Can Benefit From Price Scraping?

For businesses that have a significant level of competition, price scraping becomes an essential practice to survive in the competition. It enables the business to perform competitor price comparison which is essential for finding the appropriate price point for attracting customers and earning profit. Also, it helps in providing basic insights to the consumer choices and market demands.

Online portals such as Amazon have trained us all to look for the cheapest price available. Their algorithm is customer-centric and that’s why the prices keep on changing quickly. As per a survey, e-commerce customers see the prices as one of the main buying factors while shopping online.

Takeaway

Many times it might feel impossible to stand out and carve a niche for yourself in the competition. The e-commerce platforms are overcrowded and it seems challenging to be able to find a place for your brand in the crowd. However, it is not that hard to take your seller or reseller information to next level.

It is said that novices watch their own brand while the masters look at the opponent’s brand. Thanks to the price scraping tools that monitors others’ prices has become a lot easy and even less expensive.

This article gave you an insight into price scraping, its benefits and how you can utilize them for competitor price comparison. There is several price scraping tool available in the market and you can choose the one based on your specific needs.

Contact PriceIntelGuru to Gain Control Over Market

PriceIntelGuru is all you wished for. We provide the best pricing intelligence and efficient price scraping services. If your company is into manufacturing and processing, then you must need a good pricing strategy that is relevant and also drives better prospects. So, what are you waiting for? Call us today on +1 832 426 2023 to know more about our services and products. We ensure that our expertise can help you become the market leader in your industry.

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