Competitor price monitoring - and how to run it (with or without AI)
What to track weekly - prices, promos, new SKUs, and messaging - plus the exact steps to do it by hand or automate it with AI.
What to track in competitor price monitoring
Effective price monitoring focuses on changes that actually affect your sales, not every price point.
- 1.
Price changes on matched SKUs - Direct price cuts or hikes on products that compete with yours
- 2.
New promos and discount codes - Sales events and coupon codes that could pull demand away this week
- 3.
New product launches - Signals a competitor is expanding into your category or niche
- 4.
Messaging and positioning shifts - Changes in homepage copy or ads that reveal a new strategy
- 5.
Stock and availability changes - Sold-out items or restocks that shift where demand flows
- 6.
Bundle or shipping offer changes - Free shipping thresholds or bundles that change perceived value
Takeaway: Run this check weekly on a fixed day so price and promo changes get caught before they affect your sales, not after.
How e-commerce teams run competitor price monitoring
Time per report
Popular tools
- Shopify admin - Pull your own pricing and product catalog to compare against
- Spreadsheets - Log competitor prices and promos week over week
- Browser bookmarks/screenshots - Manually revisit competitor sites and capture changes
- Google Alerts - Catch press mentions of competitor launches or promos
Time to set up
3-5 hrs per run
Cadence: Ad-hoc, when someone remembers to check
Who does it: Analyst plus a marketer manually browsing sites
Coverage: Top 3-5 competitors, spot-checked products
Delivered as: Spreadsheet shared on request
Implement it with AI
Schedule
Integrations
ShopifyChannel