[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/05\/14\/dont-fight-the-pricing-battle-use-assortment-intelligence-to-win-the-war\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/05\/14\/dont-fight-the-pricing-battle-use-assortment-intelligence-to-win-the-war\/","headline":"Don’t fight the pricing battle, win the war with assortment intelligence","name":"Don’t fight the pricing battle, win the war with assortment intelligence","description":"Marketing genius and best-selling author Seth Godin once said, \u201cDon\u2019t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.\u201d It\u2019s all about providing the right products to your customers at the right time through the right channels. Most retailers think that if they offer everything, the customers will come \u2013 like the baseball movie, […]","datePublished":"2015-05-14","dateModified":"2021-12-02","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/mihir-kittur\/#Person","name":"Mihir Kittur","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/mihir-kittur\/","identifier":95,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d6cd89adc795e21ed8f354d5ad869764b58faff3cbcfde0e2d0b988408d3aeb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d6cd89adc795e21ed8f354d5ad869764b58faff3cbcfde0e2d0b988408d3aeb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Future of Commerce","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","width":172,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/assortment_intelligence.jpg","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/assortment_intelligence.jpg","height":375,"width":1200},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/05\/14\/dont-fight-the-pricing-battle-use-assortment-intelligence-to-win-the-war\/","about":[{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/commerce\/","name":"Commerce","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Commerce","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q26643"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/commerce\/intelligent-enterprise\/","name":"Intelligent Enterprise","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intelligent_enterprise","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q6044119"]},"Retail Trends, Data, News"],"wordCount":599,"keywords":["Assortment Intelligence","Big Data","Commerce Trends","CRM | Customer Relationship Management","Customer Engagement","Customer Experience | CX","Data","Digital Commerce","E-commerce","Ecommerce","Ecommerce Trends","Marketing","Omnichannel","Online Shopping","Personalization","Retail","SAP Hybris","Shopping","Touchpoints"],"articleBody":"Marketing genius and best-selling author Seth Godin once said, \u201cDon\u2019t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.\u201d It\u2019s all about providing the right products to your customers at the right time through the right channels. Most retailers think that if they offer everything, the customers will come \u2013 like the baseball movie, Field of Dreams \u2013 if you build it, they will come.That\u2019s the first step, but through analysis of the buying habits of their customers, retailers find that only a small representation of products are interesting to certain customers.\u00a0 It\u2019s important for retailers to refine and know that what drives customers to their site won\u2019t necessarily get them to the next phase.Competing solely on price is a losing battle and retailers are looking for alternatives. Assortment intelligence gives them the capability to provide a rich consumer experience by carrying a unique assortment. They need to understand not only what their competitors are offering, but also what consumers want and what they don\u2019t want. Knowing when to carry certain items and when to drop others is the key to assortment success.Take one of the world\u2019s leading online marketplaces, for example. They have the largest assortment of pre-owned Rolex watches costing more than $1,000, compared to any other retailer in the U.S., and they found this out through assortment intelligence research. With this information, marketplace executives made some smart assortment decisions about how to market this product to their customers and capitalize on their unique assortment.When this retailer learned that they had the widest assortment in expensive Rolex watches, it helped them make the decision to increase marketing investments around these products and drive relevant promotions around them. Through deeper analysis of the buying habits of their customers, the company was able to infer which deals need to be nudged to the right affiliates to drive traffic. This intelligence was also used to guide the introduction of new products to market.The traditional approaches to product assortment have historically been limited to analysis of transactional data, anecdotal information from suppliers, and third-party market share data, but this is no longer enough. The enormous growth in consumer demand signals (things like search data, product reviews and social media likes and pins) has created a rich source of additional data, which many retailers appreciate, but are finding difficult to capture and turn into actionable insights in a timely manner.It is important to leverage these new sources of data and incorporate them into predictive algorithms to guide assortment planning decisions. Assortment intelligence enables retailers to drill down into any category, comparing multiple attributes of their assortments, from products and brands to price ranges.Strategic assortment planning should be about much more than just looking at historical information or gut-feel decisions. Now retailers can use predictive analysis to create product assortments that capitalize on what\u2019s trending among consumers today and what will be trending tomorrow, not just\u00a0what was popular yesterday \u2013 helping retailers and marketplaces sell the right products at the right time and drop products that are cooling in popularity before they\u2019re stuck with them.In the case of the leading online marketplace, data and analytics were leveraged to emphasize differentiation opportunities, improve assortment, improve pricing, and improve traffic by better connecting with the consumers using data and analytics. Any online retailer can take a page from this company\u2019s playbook to achieve similar results.  The friction is REAL when it comes to the modern buyer’s journey.\u00a0Fortunately, there’s an omnichannel solution. Download the report NOW."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"2015","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"05","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/\/05\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"14","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/\/05\/\/14\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"Don’t fight the pricing battle, win the war with assortment intelligence","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2015\/05\/14\/dont-fight-the-pricing-battle-use-assortment-intelligence-to-win-the-war\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]