To help retailers better manage online affiliate selling programs with manufacturers, Channel Intelligence Inc. will soon launch a set of services that let merchants analyze the sales rates and pricing policies of their competition, Alan Fulmer, co-founder and vice president, tells Internet Retailer.
"Retailers are trying to figure out which products to carry, and now we’ll provide them customized reports that shows how well each product category is selling," Fulmer says.
The new Channel Intelligence Data Services program will be based on product sales related to the 75 manufacturers that use Channel Intelligence to link their corporate brand sites to retailers that sell their products. Channel Intelligence, using web services technology, provides direct links between manufacturers’ and retailers’ web sites, supporting consumers who prefer to research product information on a manufacturer’s site before making a purchase on a retail site. The links -- from manufacturers like Panasonic and Sony to retailers including Best Buy Co. Inc. and Circuit City Stores Inc. as well as local and regional merchants – bring shoppers from manufacturers’ sites to the buy pages of merchant sites. Channel Intelligence also provides shoppers with visibility into available inventory, so they can know whether a particular product is in stock at a retailer before placing an order.
The data services program relies on sales data on about 13,000 products offered by the 75 manufacturers that use Channel Intelligence to link with retailers. It uses that data to produce customized reports for individual merchants that indicate how well particular product categories are selling. For example, Fulmer says, a merchant could use the reports to analyze how well the categories of their top 250 products are already selling through Channel Intelligence links between the 75 manufacturers and their retail partners.
In addition, the service notifies retailers when their prices go outside of a pre-set range of prices offered by other retailers. This lets them analyze their sales along with benchmarked price settings. Fulmer notes that one retailer who has tested the service discovered why it was experiencing low conversion rates for a particular product even though it priced the product lower than its competitors’ prices. "They realized it was because they weren’t offering the available manufacturer’s rebate," he says.
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