ASDA CEO Andy Clarke has offered a ‘copper-bottomed guarantee’ that they will give customers a voucher if their basket isn’t cheaper than their rivals. We haven’t seen the small print yet on this offer yet, but it looks dramatic – and some might think it may make ASDA a hostage to fortune.
So how will ASDA monitor competitor prices in all stores and how will they then implement local or national price changes to maintain its differential – or will it bother? Will its shoppers become its ‘mystery-shoppers’?
It could add up to a difficult or expensive challenge. If a competitor makes a regional or temporary price change, how will it respond – and how will it get its response to the shelf-edge without error, on-time, synchronised with its EPoS so as to avoid misleading consumers?
There are new technologies now to help drive competitive and dynamic promotional pricing – to automate this whole process. Cogenta (www.cogenta.com) is one of a new breed of B2B service providers that can gather and deliver competitor pricing from a range of store and online sources. ZBD's graphic electronic shelf labels (www.zbdsolutions.com) can deliver this competitor pricing information – and responsive pricing – to the shelf-edge within minutes of it appearing in the public domain – in-store as well as online, synchronising multi-channel retailing.
Being competitive is now an order of magnitude more difficult than in the old days of ‘one size fits all’ pricing. Micro-market pricing is just part of retailers’ moving to more granular and scientific systems. This new price war – with estimates than price-cutting by the big 4 will save the consumer £500m in January – may become a war that will be influenced by some impressive new technology.
Jann Naef
Product Marketing Director
Jann.naef@zbdsolutions.com
