Competitor data sits at the heart of Dynamic Pricing. Four pricing actions use it to position your price against the market: Match Competitor, Match Price Position, Set Market Value, and Match by Sensitivity. Each answers a slightly different question, from "track one specific rival" to "let every product find its own position automatically." This article covers all four. For how actions fit into a strategy overall, see Pricing Actions: The Building Blocks of a Dynamic Pricing Strategy.
Match Competitor
Match Competitor targets a single competitor by name. You choose which competitor to follow and by how much to undercut or exceed them. It supports a fixed offset ("Amazon minus €2": always €2 below Amazon), a percentage offset ("Amazon minus 3%": always 3% below Amazon), or an exact match ("Match Amazon": the same price).
Use it when you have one clear rival you want to track. If competitor data is missing for a product, that product simply keeps its previous price rather than being changed.
Match Price Position
Match Price Position targets a position in the market rather than a named competitor. Lowest matches the cheapest competitor, Highest matches the most expensive, and Average sets the price to the average across the competitors you've selected. You can choose which competitors to include in the calculation.
Products that have no competitor data at all are excluded from the results with this action, so they won't appear in the output. Use Match Price Position when you want to sit at a consistent point relative to the whole market, not track one specific rival.
Set Market Value
Set Market Value is similar to Match Price Position but offers more statistical options: minimum, maximum, mean, median, and mode across all competitors. Reach for it when the plain lowest/highest/average of Match Price Position isn't precise enough, for example when the median gives a fairer picture than the mean because one outlier competitor is skewing the average.
If competitor data is missing for a product, that product keeps its previous price.
Match by Sensitivity
Match by Sensitivity is the most automatic of the four. Instead of naming a competitor or fixing a market position, it positions each product according to how price-sensitive that product is.
Each product carries a price-sensitivity score from 0 to 100. The score decides where in the product's competitor price range it should sit, and the system then matches the real competitor whose price is closest to that point:
A high score (100) means the product reacts strongly to competition, so it anchors to the cheapest competitor to stay competitive.
A low score (0) means the product barely reacts to competition, so it anchors to the most expensive competitor and holds a higher price.
Mid scores land proportionally in between.
For example, with competitors at €10, €12, and €14, a product scored 100 matches the €10 competitor, a product scored 0 matches the €14 competitor, and a mid score lands near the €12 one.
The direction is worth remembering: higher sensitivity follows the cheapest competitor; lower sensitivity follows the most expensive. If you expected the reverse, it's worth double-checking during setup.
The value of this action is that a single strategy can treat every product differently according to its own sensitivity, without you hand-picking a competitor for each one. Commodity items (high sensitivity) chase the market floor, while differentiated items (low sensitivity) protect their premium. It's most useful across a catalogue that mixes price-sensitive and premium products. As with the other competitor actions, you can restrict which competitors are eligible.
A few details on how it resolves edge cases:
With one competitor, it matches that competitor directly. With several, it picks the one closest to the score's target.
When two or more competitors are equally close to the target, the system matches one of them and records the others as "also eligible" in the step-price audit trail, so you can see the match was a close call.
If a product is missing its sensitivity score, it's treated as if the score were 50, the neutral midpoint of its competitor range. It isn't skipped. If you want specific behaviour on every product, make sure each one has a score.
What happens when competitor data is missing
The four actions handle missing competitor data slightly differently, which is worth knowing when you're troubleshooting results.
Action | If a product has no competitor data |
Match Competitor | Keeps its previous price |
Set Market Value | Keeps its previous price |
Match Price Position | Excluded from the results entirely |
Match by Sensitivity | Keeps its previous price and is flagged as unsuccessful in the audit trail (still appears in the results) |
If missing data on some products is a concern, Match Competitor with a fallback chain gives you the most predictable behaviour.
Choosing between them
Match Competitor is for merchants who have a clear rival they want to track. Match Price Position and Set Market Value are for merchants who want to sit at a defined point relative to the market as a whole. Match by Sensitivity is for merchants who want each product to position itself automatically based on how exposed it is to competition, most valuable across a catalogue that mixes price-sensitive and premium items.
Whichever you choose, it's good practice to keep your competitor data clean so these actions work from reliable inputs. See Competitor Filtering: Keeping Your Competitor Data Clean.