James Sills explains in Progressive Grocer how AI Pricing enables retail competition and drives customer loyalty.
Price strategy is more crucial than ever in the competitive and fast-paced grocery industry. Historically, retailers have relied on manual processes, vendor recommendations, spreadsheets or other outdated systems to manage prices. However, as shopping behaviors evolve, new competitors emerge and product assortments diversify, these traditional methods are becoming increasingly obsolete. To remain competitive, grocers must embrace innovative and sophisticated solutions that are more accurate, responsive, localized and automated.
The Limitations of Traditional Pricing Methods
Traditional pricing solutions using spreadsheets or outdated pricing software face significant limitations, including:
- Manual Processes: Pricing teams must manually update spreadsheets, which can lead to errors, inefficiencies and delayed responses to market changes.
- Limited Data Analysis: Traditional tools lack the ability to process large volumes of data from multiple sources, such as TLOG/sales, competitor prices, promotional activity, vendor deals and assortment/space changes. This restricts the retailer’s ability to make informed decisions.