In a Dynamic Pricing strategy, pricing actions are the building blocks. Each action is a rule that modifies the suggested price, and you combine them into a sequence that expresses your pricing strategy. They run in order, so the order matters: the output of one action becomes the input to the next.
The actions you can use
Action | What it does | Example |
Match Competitor | Sets the price to a specific competitor's price, with an optional offset | "Match Amazon minus €2" or "Match Amazon minus 3%" |
Match Price Position | Sets the price to the lowest, highest, or average across competitors | "Be the cheapest in the market" |
Set Market Value | Sets the price to a market statistic (min, max, mean, median, mode) | "Price at the market median" |
Match by Sensitivity | Matches a competitor chosen automatically from the product's price-sensitivity score | "Chase the market on price-sensitive items, hold price on the rest" |
Set Base Price | Calculates the price from cost using a margin formula | "Target a 35% retail margin" |
Change Price | Adjusts the current suggested price by a fixed amount or percentage | "Add €5" or "Increase by 10%" |
Add or Subtract | Adds to or subtracts from cost, a competitor price, or another attribute | "Cost plus 40%" |
Set AI Optimal Price | Uses a pre-calculated AI optimal price | "Use the AI's profit-maximizing price" |
Set to Internal Value | Sets the price to any internal product attribute | "Use the recommended retail price" |
The four competitor-based actions (Match Competitor, Match Price Position, Set Market Value, and Match by Sensitivity) have their own dedicated article. See Competitor-Based Pricing Actions.
How actions chain together
Actions run from top to bottom. Each one changes the price, and the next action starts from that new price. This lets you combine several ideas into a single strategy.
A simple chain might look like this:
Match Competitor: "Match Amazon" → the price becomes €45.00.
Change Price: "Subtract 5%" → the price becomes €42.75.
Safeguards then ensure this stays above your cost-plus-margin floor.
The result is precise, composable control: you can combine market awareness with margin protection in one strategy.
A note on margins: retail margin vs. markup
When you use Set Base Price to calculate a price from cost, there are two different ways to express margin, and they produce meaningfully different prices for the same percentage. It's worth being clear about which one you're using.
Retail margin ("Set Preferred Margin") is margin as a percentage of the selling price. A 30% retail margin on a product that costs €10 gives a selling price of €14.29, calculated as cost ÷ (1 − 0.30).
Markup ("Add Preferred Margin") is margin as a percentage of cost. A 30% markup on the same €10 product gives a selling price of €13.00, calculated as cost × 1.30.
Same percentage, different price. If a margin calculation looks wrong, checking which of these two you've selected is the first thing to verify.
Using AI optimal prices as an action
Dynamic Pricing can also draw on the AI's work. The Set AI Optimal Price action lets you use a pre-calculated optimal price (the same kind of price Price Optimization produces from demand curves) as a starting point in your rule chain.
Option | What it does |
Optimal Profit Price | The AI's recommendation for maximum profit. |
Optimal Revenue Price | The AI's recommendation for maximum revenue. |
Optimal Profit Discount | The profit price, but applied only if it lowers the price. |
Optimal Revenue Discount | The revenue price, but applied only if it lowers the price. |
The two discount variants are useful for markdown strategies: they use the AI's recommendation but never raise a price. This action is what lets you blend AI intelligence with your own rules, for example, "Start with the AI's optimal profit price, then make sure we're never more than 5% above the market average." The AI sets the baseline; your rules refine it.
Keeping prices within bounds
Pricing actions decide the target price, but they aren't where you enforce hard limits. For margin floors and price ceilings, use Safeguards, which are always enforced no matter what the actions produce. See How to Add Safeguards to Your Pricing Strategy. To keep related products aligned, use pricing groups (see Pricing Groups – User Guide), and to control price endings, see How Price Rounding Works.