Ecommerce

5 Must Have Competitive Intelligence Tools for Retailers

By Tinuiti Team

Are you looking for a great way to track your competitors and ensure your retail business is staying profitable in your marketplace?

Keeping tabs on your competitors can be difficult.

Are you price competitive?

Are they running any great promotions?

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Generally, the only way to find out is to do the legwork, and spend hours poring over sites, emails, and other marketing materials just to get an idea of where you stand…

…or you can do it the easy way and take advantage of competitive intelligence tools.

Here are some powerful competitive intelligence tools that can help you monitor your competitors’ performance.

MarketTrack

Level

Advanced

Price

MarketTrack doesn’t have set pricing for its competitive intelligence services listed on the site. Contact the company and speak to a representative or schedule a demo to learn more about the tool.

Capabilities

MarketTrack acquired ChannelIQ, one of our former recommendations on this list. We highly recommend MarketTrack for several reasons. First, they offer ecommerce pricing tracking. Secondly, they offer brand protection services. And third, they offer MAP monitoring. And that’s just their MarketTrack segment–there’s also Ad Dynamics, Competitrack, and MarketTrackGlobal that have their own benefits.There’s a reason why 2100 advertisers, retailers, manufacturers, and brands rely on MarketTrack for all of the above.

Benefits

MarketTracks’s offerings are all solid, but we think brands should be especially excited about their brand protection services. This tool can notify you about unauthorized sellers online who are taking a chunk out of your revenue with shady practices.

Upstream Commerce

Level

Advanced

Price

Upstream Commerce offers four uniquely priced plans. The plan you fall into depends on the number of SKUs you want to track, as well as the number of competitors you wish to monitor. There are no monthly subscription fees.

Capabilities

Upstream Commerce offers a comprehensive suite of intelligence tools designed specifically for retailers. The suite allows for 24-7, real-time monitoring of your competitors and their prices, and it offers visual tools to help users understand the ebb and flow of their SKUs’ pricing across the industry.

Also included in the suite are assortment intelligence tools, which help retailers to watch their competitor’s product offerings, determine the ideal mix of SKUs to offer, and identify potential opportunities for improvement.

Benefits

Upstream is one of the few tools that offers pricing analysis and assortment analysis all in one, allowing you to not only optimize your individual SKUs but your product offering as a whole.

Additionally, Upstream allows you to easily sift through data, offering detailed drill-downs, customized reports, and filterable results. Upstream also integrates seamlessly with the Magento platform, though the ability to changes pricing directly in the tool is not yet available.

Competitive Intelligence Services (CIS)

Level

Enterprise

Price

CIS doesn’t have set pricing for its competitive intelligence services. All pricing is determined on a case-by-case basis. To find out yours, you’ll need to contact a CIS representative.

Capabilities

CIS offers a number of competitive intelligence services, including competitor profiling, business model analysis, manufacturing cost analysis and competitive monitoring and forecasting.

One of the biggest tools in CIS’ arsenal is its competitive benchmarking service, which measures a retailer’s performance against their industry’s top earners and helps identify areas for improvement and growth. CIS also offers reporting on “competitive threats,” alerting retailers when competitors are becoming viable threats to profitability or if there have been key changes in their marketplace.

Benefits

CIS offers customized competitive intelligence solutions, so you can get the most effective tools for your specific brand and budget. CIS also gives you an unparalleled view of your competitive marketplace as a whole, identifying potential threats, notifying you of important industry changes and more.

Aqute Intelligence

Level

Enterprise

Price

Pricing for Aqute is established on a case-by-case basis. To find out what Aqute will cost for your business, you’ll need to get in contact with an Aqute representative who will evaluate your needs and provide you with a customized price.

Capabilities

Aqute helps you really delve into your competitor’s business.

In addition to price monitoring, you can also analyze competitors’ internal structure, their overall revenues and finances, their product plans, their strengths, their weaknesses and much more, so you can change your strategy accordingly.

You can even use Aqute to produce product roadmaps, and get a leg up on your competitors’ upcoming product launches and releases. All in all, Aqute helps deliver a 360-view of your competitive marketplace, shedding light on key opportunities for growth and upward mobility.

Benefits

Aqute gives you an unfettered look at your competitors – from their per-department revenue to the nitty-gritty details of their customer demographics. No other competitive intelligence tool is so thorough. Plus, Aqute has been used by a number of huge brands, including Procter & Gamble, Ford, IBM, Dell, Google, Coca-Cola, eBay and more, so you can rest assured it’s effective.

Wiser

Level

Advanced

Price

Wiser offers three monthly plans: the Pro, which costs $699; the Premium+, which costs $1499; and the Enterprise, which is customized to your needs and budget.

With the Pro plan, you can monitor up to 15,000 products. On the Premium+ plan, it’s 50,000 products, and on the Enterprise plan, you can go up to 1 million products.

Capabilities

Wiser’s dynamic pricing and merchandising engine, WisePricer, offers competitive price monitoring and analysis tools with a twist. Instead of just giving you the information on your competitors and their prices, WisePricer actually allows you to act on that data. You can sync WisePricer with your inventory and change pricing in real time.

You can also set pricing rules and create mark-up/mark-down strategies, and you can ensure you’re staying competitive with other retailers 24-7. WisePricer also allows you to gather historical data and analytics on pricing, so you have all the info you need to make profitable decisions.

Benefits

Wiser syncs easily with all major ecommerce platforms, including Magento, ChannelAdvisor, Bigcommerce and more, and it allows you to update pricing in real-time. Instead of just looking at data and analytics, WisePricer gives you a way to build off that information and improve your store’s profitability immediately. An assortment feature to monitor competitors’ inventory in addition to price. WisePricer is also one of the few competitive intelligence tools with a set, easy-to-understand pricing model.

Competitive Intelligence Tool Features

Competitive Intelligence Tool Level Price
 Channel IQ  Advanced   Varies based on SKUs & market 
 Upstream Commerce  Advanced   Dependent on SKUs
 Competitive Intelligence Services (CIS)  Enterprise  Case by case pricing
 Aqute intelligence  Enterprise  Case by case pricing
 Wiser  Advanced  $699+

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