Most retailers care about turning a profit when stocking up on a particular range of products. You need to ensure that they don’t engage in unfair business practices that can harm your brand in the process.
The Internet gives savvy shoppers the convenience to compare prices and product offerings between different retailers before making a purchase. At the end of this process, they will make an informed choice to get value for money.
Not to be left behind, retailers are investing in technology that lets them spy and undercut other retailers. These pricing games might be all fun for the retailer looking to offload their stocks quickly. However, they often end up hurting your brand. Fortunately, you can get ahead of such situations with the help of a price-tracking tool.
Preserve Brand Integrity
Usually, the company with a larger purse forces the smaller companies to surrender, but they both experience severe losses. As with any war, there’s a lot of collateral damage, and if your products are caught up in the melee, you will suffer irreparable harm.
Lowered prices in this time when consumers are moving toward ethical brands can lead most people to blacklist your brand. There’s an increasing fear of brands seen as exploiting cheap labor markets to save on costs. If your products flood the market at super low prices, it only takes one rumor that you’re not ethical in your production process to ruin your brand image.
Attract More Retailers to Your Network
Having a vast, orderly distribution network is crucial to the success of your product and market penetration. It lets you have a national presence and distribute your products to consumers across the country. That means you should have both large and small retailers carrying your products. In addition to the popularity of your products, retailers will look at the profit margin before moving your line.
By enforcing pricing control, you can level the playing ground and entice the smaller retailers to carry your products. You need to shield the smaller retailer for unfair competition and business practices from the more established companies in your network. Uniform pricing means that the customer has the option of buying from any retailer in your system.
Reprimand Unauthorized Sellers
Since a pricing policy does not bind them, rogue resellers won’t play by the rules when pricing the goods. They will rate them just high enough to turn a profit and clear out their stock. The low prices will lead them to have an unfair edge over the retailer in your network, lowering their sales.
Using the price-tracking tools, you can find the rogue entities and have them drop your products. That allows the store in your network to sell more, which will entice them to carry more of your range of products.
In the end, you need a firm grip on your distribution network to keep rogue operators from ruining your brand reputation and perception. With the right technology, you can enforce a minimum advertised price among retailers within your network and prevent price undercutting.
