How do I use product strategies?

In this article (~4 min read):

What is a product strategy?
Connecting product strategies

Standard strategies
Custom strategies

How do I check current violations?
Viewing, editing, and deleting strategies

What is a product strategy?

Retail companies usually have different product groups that follow a variety of guidelines for pricing, running promotional offers, managing stocks, and other special conditions to stay competitive on the rapidly changing market. Therefore, category managers need to be aware if any rules or strategies are not followed, and we are ready to help you track such issues.

Connect product strategies to get notified about violations, check the situation in detail, and download a report if necessary. You can use this data to adjust prices and negotiate with your suppliers later. Here is the list of default product strategies available in your dashboard:

Follow the cheapest	Your products should have the same price as the cheapest offer on the market. Violated if your price is not equal to the minimum market price.
Be the cheapest	Your products should have a lower price than the rest of the market. No competitors should have the same price. Violated if your price is not the lowest or your competitors have the same price.
Exclusive assortment	You have special conditions negotiated with your suppliers to sell exclusive products that no other retailer sells. Violated if your competitors also sell these products.
Exclusive promo	You run a promotional offer no one else on the market is supposed to run. Violated if your competitors also have a promo for the selected products.
Compliance with MAP	Both your and the market prices should be the same or higher than Minimum Advertised Price (MAP). Violated if your price follows MAP while competitor prices are lower than MAP.
Follow the average price ±5%	Your price should be 5% lower or higher than the arithmetical average of the market calculated on our side. Violated if your price differs from the market average by 5% and more.

Connecting product strategies

Standard strategies

In order to connect one of the standard strategies in Competera, please follow these steps:

Go to the main analytical dashboard (Analytics — Overview) in your campaign.
The strategies block is located on the left side above the opportunity cards.
Select the strategy you want to connect and press the Connect button.
Note: Point the information (i) icon to see a reminder about each strategy rules.
You will see a pop-up window where you need to assign products to a strategy. It is possible either to paste a list of items into this window or upload them from a file — select the upload option and then press Next.
Upload the list of product SKUs that should follow the current strategy. Each item should be put on a separate line irrespective of the upload option.
When the upload is completed, you will see the number of assigned items.
Keep in mind that non-existent products cannot be used to track violations. If some items are not available in the campaign, you will see two numbers showing how many products were uploaded in comparison with the total product count.

Note: You can assign several different strategies to the same product, e.g. if it should be exclusive and the cheapest on the market at the same time. However, assigning more than one pricing strategy to a product is not recommended to avoid overlaps.
Check the ‘I want to receive daily email alerts about strategy violations’ option to receive email notifications. Otherwise, you will see violations in your dashboard only.
Click the Finish button to complete the strategy setup and start tracking violations.
The current amount of connected strategies will be displayed next to the View my strategies button. You can also use it to see which strategies have been added.

Custom strategies

Let us know if your strategy is not available among the standard options via the Request a custom strategy button. We will check your request and reach you to discuss the details in a short time. Custom strategy implementation does not require any additional fees and is completely free of charge.

How do I check current violations?

In order to learn if there are any strategy violations at the current moment you simply need to open your dashboard and check the Product strategies block. Once you have connected a strategy, the banner will disappear if no violations are detected at the moment. If there are, you should see a slightly different card showing the number of products with a violation:

You can drill down to the product level to check the violation details and download a report in one of the available formats by clicking on the View button:

Viewing, editing, and deleting strategies

All active strategies in your campaign can be accessed by clicking on the View my strategies button at the top of the Product strategies block. Here you can drill down to the list of all products the current strategy is assigned to:

Note: Make sure to keep the product list assigned to each strategy relevant and up-to-date to receive actual data about violations. Otherwise, you might miss important alerts.

In order to update the list of assigned products, you will need to complete the connecting step from scratch. Point the strategy card and click the pencil icon near the title to start editing.

If you stop using a strategy for some reason, e.g. due to a change in your approach to managing the respective product group, it can also be deleted. Click on the bin icon upon pointing the strategy card and confirm your action. After that, you should see the ‘Deleted’ notification at the bottom left corner of your screen.

What do you think about product strategies? Let us know if this article was useful and share your opinion in the comment section! 👇

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