CHINA. Prominent Chinese travel retail data analytics specialist Jessica’s Secret* today (12 January) announced the release of AI Tracking 3.0, the latest upgrade to the company’s flagship price-monitoring system.
The new version directly addresses one of the most persistent challenges in today’s ecommerce and travel retail markets – the rise of ‘hidden discounts’ driven by gift with purchase (GWP) strategies.
It achieved this by introducing a precise gift value calculation capability. This enhancement further strengthens AI Tracking’s core competitiveness in price intelligence and marks a significant advancement in industry-wide data analytics capabilities, the company said.
As competition in China’s retail market intensifies, particularly within travel retail, pricing strategies across major ecommerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, as well as duty-free operators and destination retailers, have undergone a fundamental shift, Jessica’s Secret said.
Traditional promotions – including direct discounts, price reductions and special offers – are increasingly being replaced by gift-led promotional mechanics. Under this model, headline prices may show minimal or no discounts, while substantial value is transferred through multiple gifts, in some cases exceeding ten items per product.
While effective from a marketing perspective, this approach has significantly disrupted conventional price comparison frameworks. The true value of a product becomes difficult to quantify, greatly increasing the complexity of price analysis for brands, retailers and market researchers. As a result, the inability to systematically measure hidden discounts has become a widespread industry pain point.
To address this challenge, Jessica’s Secret has leveraged its deep expertise in travel retail analytics, accumulated through years of hands-on pricing analysis, and collaborated closely with industry specialists to develop a new solution powered by advanced AI technologies.
AI Tracking 3.0 integrates image recognition and intelligent data computation, enabling the system to analyse product detail pages and key visuals across ecommerce platforms. It can accurately identify gift types, specifications and quantities, and apply a scientifically structured valuation model built on industry benchmarks to calculate the monetary value of GWPs at the SKU level.
The introduction of gift value calculation will help brand owners better monitor channel pricing integrity and mitigate brand value erosion caused by implicit low-price competition
This capability fills a critical gap in the market by enabling the quantification of hidden discounts for the first time at scale, Jessica’s Secret observed. More importantly, it allows price analysis to move beyond surface-level pricing towards a true value-based assessment, revealing the real competitiveness of retail offers with far greater transparency.
Prior to the launch of AI Tracking 3.0, gift value assessment across the industry was largely dependent on manual processes. Analysts were required to record prices by hand, calculate gift values individually and repeatedly verify whether promotional mechanics had changed – a time-consuming and error-prone workflow.
Since its initial launch in 2020, AI Tracking has served multiple global brands and retailers, earning strong market recognition, Jessica’s Secret said.
Through continuous iteration, the system has evolved into a comprehensive price intelligence platform. It currently monitors pricing data across more than 700 retailers worldwide, providing 24/7 updates on product prices, discounts, promotional mechanics and GWPs. The platform supports advanced calculations such as optimal price, single-item optimal price, and detailed breakdowns of tiered promotional structures.
It can also quantify the number of active promotions per retailer and analyse how many promotional campaigns each individual SKU participates in.
These capabilities have fundamentally transformed price-monitoring workflows, significantly improving analytical efficiency while reducing reliance on manual labour for brands and retailers alike.
A Jessica’s Secret spokesperson said the launch of AI Tracking 3.0 represents another milestone in the company’s commitment to advancing data analytics within the travel retail industry.
The introduction of gift value calculation will help brand owners better monitor channel pricing integrity and mitigate brand value erosion caused by implicit low-price competition.
At the same time, it provides retailers with actionable insights to optimise promotional strategies and enhances the depth and accuracy of market intelligence available to industry stakeholders.
Looking ahead, Jessica’s Secret said it will continue to focus on AI-driven innovation, further expanding its analytics capabilities to address evolving industry needs and support the digital transformation and sustainable growth of the travel retail sector.
AI Tracking 3.0 is now live and has already attracted strong interest from multiple travel retail brands and ecommerce platforms, the spokesperson said.
The solution has been successfully deployed for several clients, delivering measurable value in real-world applications, the company added. ✈
*The Moodie Davitt Report works closely with Jessica’s Secret. The two companies combined to create The Jessica’s Secret Index, a monthly indicator of what’s hot with the app’s predominantly younger Chinese traveller user base. The results do not represent sales rankings but offer a useful insight into Chinese consumer interest on a monthly basis.
Jessica’s Secret Founder & CEO Mirko Wang will be attending The Trinity Forum in Doha, Qatar on 5-6 February.
