# Competitive pricing

If you are operating in a market where prices tend to fluctuate quickly, it may be beneficial to set your prices on the basis of your competitors.

## Price Data

Norce Competitor Pricing is based on a feed with competitor price data. There are several price crawling services available on the market and Norce can integrate with most of them. At the moment the feed has to be integrated by the Norce team.

Once the feed is up and running, you can see an overview of your incoming data at **Pricing > Competitors**. This overview displays the number of matched products between your catalog and each competitor, as well as the date and time of the last update for the feed.

![Competitors](/assets/competitors.1aeec7aafd51134c51d953e833d68031e7a015e5bd7d818e39f3ce1e636a6683.17d27d97.png)

## Setting up a Competitive Price List

For a general overview on how to set up price lists, please refer to Price lists. 

Once competitor prices are integrated into Storm, you can create a competitor-based price list by selecting the **Competitive** price rule. Competitive pricing can be based on both purchase cost and unit cost.

You can set up specific rules for a combination of *Category*, *Manufacturer*, and *Value Range*. If a Competitive price rule is selected, you can set the following parameters:

| PARAMETER | DESCRIPTION |
|  --- | --- |
| *Minimum Margin* | Refers to the lowest possible profit margin that the calculated price can never fall below. |
| *Preferred Position* | Sets the desired position compared to the competitors when Norce calculates the price. Default is 1, the best price compared to competitors. If *Preferred Position* is i.e. set to 2, the calculated price will be the second lowest on the market. |
| *Target Margin* | The maximum margin if no competitors decrease the price. |
| *Limit to Recommended Price* | If checked, the calculated price can never exceed Recommended Price. |


![Competitors on price list](/assets/competitive-pricing.8ffef8bff2ac5d9a920172aa3d38a7d6cc7752f4bf4ffc777fd760be8927e894.17d27d97.png)
If you change the Price rule to **Fixed price**, it means that the selected Category and/or Manufacturer are not included in the price calculation.

## Setting Competitive Pricing on a Category

For each category it’s possible to define how the pricing should be set compared to each individual competitor. It’s possible to do this for each price list that has a competitive price rule.

| PARAMETER | DESCRIPTION |
|  --- | --- |
| *Priority* | Priority is set as 1, 2, 3… and is used to rank the competitors when calculating the price. As long as the product is available at a higher ranked competitor, that competitor's price will be used for the calculation. If not set, all available competitors will be taken in to consideration when calculating the price. Please see the following example: Competitors with Priority set to 1 will only be used in the price calculation.If the product is not available at any competitors with Priority 1, Priority 2 competitors will be used to calculate the price, and so on. |
| *Positioning* | How your price should be adjusted relative to each individual competitor. Can be set as either a Fixed Sum or Percentage. Fixed Sum EUR 2 means your price always will be 2 Euro above the individual competitor as long as it doesn’t fall below the minimum margin. Percentage -5% means your price always will be 5% below the individual competitor as it doesn’t fall below the minimum margin.  |
| *Require in Stock* | Allows you to specify that a competitor should only be included in the price comparison if they have the product in stock. |


![Competitors on category](/assets/competitor-category.c7d14f1bdb781519efe898626cce940ab38a978cf12bc7992cb0a18507a3f196.17d27d97.png)

## Copying Category Competitors

By using the Copy functionality it’s possible to copy the category competitors to all child categories or to a completely different category.

![Competitors coy](/assets/copy-competitors.bb5310f741ac1c6eebc47235d940bbf1fa36d53dbe310e9061cbd2ce4d96f372.17d27d97.png)

## Setting Competitive Pricing on a Product

You can define a price rule for an individual product, which will override the rules set on the Category, Manufacturer, or Price list level. To exclude a specific product from competitor pricing, change the price rule to Fixed price.

![Competitors on product](/assets/competitor-product.78c4c16824f769503e16a78bbd7fdeac6c6af566322f8c31bdf8fa093d0f8a8a.17d27d97.png)

## Reporting

It is possible to filter out competitors and competitor prices in the product listing by selecting either the Best Competitor or a specific competitor. Useful fields that can be added to the reporting are:

- *CompetitorName*
- *CompetitorPrice*
- *CompetitorPositioningType*
- *CompetitorPositioningPercentageValue*
- *CompetitorPositioningFixedAmount*
- *CompetitorAdjustedPrice*
- *CompetitorIsinStock*