Automatic Price Matching for Australian Ecommerce Stores: How to Do It Without Racing to the Bottom

Most Australian online shoppers compare prices before they buy. They check Google Shopping, a couple of competitor sites, and sometimes a marketplace. If you are noticeably dearer on a product people are price-shopping, you lose the sale and often never see the visit.

The obvious answer is to match the cheapest competitor. Done carelessly, that is also how stores end up selling at a loss. This guide covers how to monitor competitor prices and reprice automatically while protecting your margin.

Start with your floor, not the competitor

Every product needs a minimum price you will never go below. It should come from your cost, your target margin and any fees, not from what a competitor charges. If a rival prices below your floor, the right response is to hold the floor and let them have that sale.

• Floor (minimum price): cost plus the margin you need to be profitable after fees and shipping.
• Ceiling (maximum price): usually the recommended retail price, so an automatic change never prices you above RRP.
• Rounding: decide whether prices end in .00, .95 or .99 so changes look consistent.

Choose a strategy on purpose

There are several sensible rules, and the right one depends on the product:

• Match the lowest competitor: simple, and keeps you level with the market.
• Beat the cheapest by a small amount, but only above your floor: wins the comparison without ever dropping below margin.
• Stay within a percentage of the market average: useful for products with many sellers and noisy prices.
• Hold price on exclusive or hard-to-find products: not everything needs matching.

Be careful which competitors count

A price from a retailer that is out of stock, a grey-market seller, or a marketplace listing for a different variant can drag your price down for no reason. Good monitoring checks that the competitor page really is the same product (the model code or barcode matches, the option is the right size) and ignores out-of-stock listings.

This is also why matching on product title alone is risky. Two products can share most of their name and differ in size, fuel type or what is included in the box. Anything the system is unsure about should wait for a person to approve it, not change live prices.

Add a review step

Automatic repricing is safest when new or unusual matches go to a review queue first. Once a match is confirmed it can reprice on its own inside your floor and ceiling. Until then it should not touch your prices.

Watch your own site and feed

A price change only helps if shoppers see it. Check that your storefront shows the new price promptly, since page caching can keep an old price on screen for a while, and that your Google Shopping feed picks it up. If the price on your product page and the price in your feed disagree, Google can disapprove the product.

Read: why Merchant Centre products get disapproved and how to fix them →

A simple way to start

• Pick your top 50 to 100 products by traffic or sales and track those first.
• Set a floor and ceiling for each one before turning any automation on.
• Begin with a review step, then loosen it as you trust the matches.
• Check weekly which products moved, by how much, and what it did to sales and margin.

RivalView monitors competitor prices every day on the products you choose and reprices inside the floor and ceiling you set, with matches reviewable before they go live.

See RivalView pricing and sizes →

Compare price monitoring tools →