News

Digital tool provides retailers 24/7 visibility into competitors' product offerings

June 11, 2012

Retailers can track assortment changes at competitors' websites in real-time and adjust their own product-mix accordingly when using Upstream Commerce's latest tool in its Retail Intelligence Suite — Assortment Intelligence.

The Suite is a cloud-based software-as-a-service solution that uses advanced artificial intelligence, semantic analysis, data-mining and image-recognition algorithms to give retailers comprehensive, real-time competitive price monitoring and analysis, as well as product and assortment intelligence, according to a company press release.

With the new Assortment Intelligence tool, retailers can view, compare and analyze the overlap between their own and their competitors' assortments; identify competitors' products that they don't currently carry (but may wish to add); and identify products which they may currently carry exclusively, Upstream Commerce CEO, Amos Peleg, said in the release.

"Assortment composition is far too critical a merchandising decision to leave to the non-real-time, highly variable nature of human assessment, judgment, and action," said Peleg. "Assortment Intelligence transforms classic manual merchandising by giving retail owners, executives, managers and buyers actionable and timely product assortment insights."

Historically, retailers have relied on personal experience and manual tracking to optimize their assortment relative to their competitors. The manual approach is no longer practical in today's intensely competitive, highly dynamic markets, said Gartner research vice president Kevin Sterneckert.

"Increasingly savvy consumers are forcing retailers to alter pricing strategies, so it is imperative for multichannel retailers to be opportunistic and flexible with their pricing so they don't miss opportunities," he said. "Retailers today need every technological advantage they can get to track competitors' pricing and assortment in real time."

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