Tool to track competitor assortments

A new offering from Upstream Commerce may change not only how online retailers track pricing, but how retailers check competitor's supplies of items. Called Assortment Intelligence, the tool tracks, in real time, changes in competitors' assortments. This can help a retailers with their own merchandising for existing products as well as adding new products to the mix.

by Kristina Knight

Kristina: How does Upstream Commerce benefit its users?

Gilon Miller, Chief Marketing Officer, Upstream Commerce: The Upstream Commerce Retail Intelligence Suite is a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) 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.

Kristina: How does the Assortment Intelligence tool change things for online retailers?

Gilon: With the new tool, retailers can view, compare and analyze the differences 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 (for which they could elect to command higher prices).

Kristina: How can retailers ensure they remain relevant to consumers?

Gilon: With Upstream Commerce Assortment Intelligence: Retailers stay relevant in today's fiercely competitive market by having access to information that will insure they are providing the RIGHT prices, and have the RIGHT products. Retailers can study competitors' assortments and get a view of what's available in the market. They can then adjust their product mix to provide the most relevant mix for their target audience while ensuring that they remain price competitive. Retailers can follow closely both pricing and assortment dynamics and trends (Upstream Commerce provides data over time) allowing them to consistently remain relevant to their target audience as things change in the market.

Kristina: What trends are you seeing in ecommerce?

Gilon: The modern retail environment is far more multi-dimensional. The ultra-connected consumer is in the driver's seat, using dozens of different touch points for obtaining information and making decisions. There are new competitors and new innovations coming into the market constantly. Work is being done more and more in a real-time environment, and retailers need tools that keep them up-to-the-moment. There are also changing demographics as the new wave of "millennials" move into the influential phase of their lives as both consumers and savvy team-members that have grown up using technology.