The Changing Landscape of E-Commerce Markets Post-COVID
Post-COVID, it is safe to say that the e-commerce markets have changed. The expectations are that e-commerce will continue to have a bigger share of retail sales in the future. Still, many e-commerce stores are also struggling as the online market is extremely competitive due to the current consumer behavior. Therefore, it is more important than ever that you, as a brand, have the right product offerings at the right price and the right resellers to promote them.
Whether you plan on expanding to new markets, extending your reseller network in your current market(s), or extending your product portfolio to reach your goals - I’ll try to outline how you can make informed decisions based on market data.
Using Competitor Data to Improve Your Product Offerings
Knowing how your competitors are acting and which of their products are trending can provide you with valuable insights into the market as it can help you identify potential gaps and opportunities when it comes to your product offerings.
Imagine that you are a brand that produces interior products, and you wish to extend your assortment. Knowing your competitors' assortment is important as it can help you identify potential gaps in the market where there may be opportunities for you to differentiate your product offering and gain a competitive advantage. Further, knowing your competitors' pricing for similar products can help you determine the right price point for your offerings.
Instead of manually monitoring the products of interest, I would suggest that you automate the data collection. While a software collects the information you need on pricing, you can spend the time investigating the quality of the products, so it will be easier to compare the quality/price ratio afterwards.
This analysis might lead to the conclusion that you have the correct products in your assortment but that they are too cheaply or expensively priced compared to the rest of the market. However, it can also lead to the findings that you miss one or more products in your assortment to be able to fulfill the needs of your customers. In that case you can use the data to pin-point which products you should look into developing as well as the quality and price it needs to have to fit the demands of the consumers.
Understanding Competitor Reseller Networks to Expand Your Reach
The same logic can be applied if you are looking into expanding your reseller network or expanding to new markets. Expanding your reseller network is an essential part of growing your business, as you can reach new customers, increase sales, and build a better brand awareness. However, finding the right resellers can be a challenging task as it needs to be a good fit to your strategy. By monitoring a selection of your competitors' products, or their whole assortment, you can obtain insights into their reseller network. These insights can be utilized as a lead list of potential new partners for your sales department - both in existing and new potential markets.
Knowing your competitors' reseller network and how they price their products can assist you in validating how well the reseller fits into your strategy to ensure that you don’t end up making agreements with retailers who will devaluate your brand. This can especially be valuable when entering new markets, where you most often have lesser insights into who are market leaders, who to avoid etc.
If you are looking to expand to more markets, collecting data on your competitors’ products on the markets that you are interested in can also help you determine which market will be the most profitable for you to enter first.
Leveraging PriceShape Software for Valuable Market Insights
To summarize, knowing your competitors' assortment can provide valuable information that can help you make more informed decisions about your own product development, as it can provide you with potential opportunities in the market. Further, it can help you identify if your current products are priced competitively compared to your competitors.
If you’re seeking to expand your reseller network or expand to new markets, then understanding your competitors' retail relationships can help inform your own sales and marketing efforts, and allow you to focus your resources correctly.
Luckily, we at PriceShape have a software that can deliver you these insights.
If you are interested in knowing more about how we can help, please feel free to reach out or sign up to a free demo and trial here.
