Gartner predicts retailers will use real-time pricing by 2025

Research and advisory company Gartner is predicting that by 2025, the top 10 global retailers by revenue will leverage contextualised real-time pricing through mobile applications to manage and adjust in-store prices for customers.

Robert Hetu, vice president research analyst at Gartner explained in the research: “Digital sales continue to grow, but it’s no longer a competition between online and offline. Today, many retailers find that half of their online sales are supported by their stores.

“As customers share more data and information from various sources, they expect more personalised and meaningful offers from retailers. Retailers should assess personal data and product preferences, and translate those inputs into immediate and contextualised offers.”

To offer consistent, relevant and personalised prices for customers, Gartner suggests that retailers need to understand customer behaviours, especially as the path to their purchase decisions becomes erratic across touchpoints, as well as educate their customers on the “dynamic nature of pricing”, highlighting that prices can rise or fall unexpectedly, and invest in pricing signage, such as electronic shelf labels or digital shelf edge technologies.

“Retailers must focus on enabling technologies such as a unified retail commerce platform, which uses centralised data for inventory, pricing, loyalty and other information to facilitate a continuous and cohesive experience,” added Hetu.