CHINA. The developer of product price-comparison app Jessica’s Secret – increasingly popular with younger Chinese travellers – has unveiled a new business-to-business price tracker for brand owners and retailers in duty free.
Called the AItracking Price Monitoring System and developed by Jessica Tech Group, it can effectively follow retailers’ prices on a daily basis and create a pricing history showing any fluctuations. “The system is more suitable for brands and retailers that want to understand the global price distribution of products and then further analyse the pricing data,” said a Jessica’s Secret spokesperson.
The spokesperson added: “Price and promotion have always been critical to consumers and therefore a big focus for the travel retail industry. With the development of the internet and digitalisation in duty free, pricing has become increasingly transparent, and competition among retailers is now fierce.”
This competition has encouraged retailers and brands to hire consulting firms to collate pricing data every month. However, according to Jessica’s Secret, traditional manual data collection is inefficient “and cannot effectively monitor the impact of short-term promotions or discounts” especially if they only last a week.
AItracking adopts two sets of price records: the daily counter display price, and the promotional price. For example, if a retailer provides a 5% coupon for consumers all year round, the system will record the discount and show the discounted price which reflects the actual transaction price.
Reference point for merchandising and marketing
As a result of its immediacy and flexibility, several retailers and brands in Asia have already subscribed to the US$60,000 per year tracking service. Speaking to The Moodie Davitt Report, Jessica’s Secret CEO Mirko Wang said: “We calculated that the pricing was equivalent to a retailer or brand hiring a traditional consulting service, but without the travel costs and time involved. We believe this service will bring more value to this industry.”
At present the tracking system has integrated price data changes back to October 2018. This is based on SKU pricing information across more than 40 countries and includes traditional department stores such as Harrods and Sephora as well as duty free players. In addition, the conversion of more than a dozen currencies is supported, including the US Dollar, Euro, Chinese Yuan and Hong Kong Dollar.
Wang said: “I heard from so many retailers and brands wanting to know the prices at competitor shops or the prices of their products in different duty free locations. Directly viewing price fluctuations and promptly exporting the reports gives users a significant reference point for merchandising, marketing and pricing. With the dramatic speed of change in travel retail, being able to adjust marketing plans quickly with accurate and timely (pricing) information has become vital.”
The Moodie Davitt Report understands that the next phase of development will be the creation of more indexes. This will facilitate data analysis so that retailers, for example, can quickly find out which brands or categories can command higher prices.
Note: The Moodie Davitt Report works closely with Jessica’s Secret. We conceived and publish the Jessica’s Secret Index each month, which provides an indicator of what’s hot with the app’s predominantly younger Chinese traveller user base across several product categories.
