Retail Price Management: Smarter Approach to Profitability and Growth

Clever price management can make or break your retail or e-commerce business. The way you handle pricing directly affects your bottom line, customer relationships, and market position.

However, managing prices efficiently can be a challenge - especially when you’re dealing with multiple platforms, different customer segments, and constantly changing market conditions.

Drowning in spreadsheets? Changing rates on various platforms? Losing sleep over competitor price wars? 

It’s time to take charge of your retail pricing management.

What is Retail Price Management?

Retail price management covers all the strategies, processes, and technology you use to set, implement, and tweak the pricing across your product range and sales channels.

It's much more than just slapping a price tag on something – modern price management needs a sophisticated approach that balances profit goals with market realities and what customers expect.

The stakes have never been higher. With customers able to compare prices instantly across competitors, market volatility, supply chain hiccups, and changing shopping habits, it's a complex landscape where old-fashioned static pricing quickly becomes outdated.

Core Pricing Strategies in Retail

Successful retailers typically use one or more of these fundamental pricing strategies:

What Pricing Management Challenges Do Retailers Face?

We've spoken to retail and e-commerce businesses of all shapes and sizes, and the struggles are remarkably similar. Some are battling a flood of data, trying to keep up with vendor price changes and regional sensitivities. 

In fact, our research shows that around 5 million product updates may happen every day, with 95% being vendor price changes. Keeping up with that manually is practically impossible. 

Based on insights from the retail companies we’ve identified 10 key obstacles that highlight the urgent need for a solution to manage prices effectively.

Inflexible Systems & ERP Limitations

• Many businesses rely on ERP-based pricing systems that lack flexibility for modern retail needs.

• Legacy systems don’t support dynamic pricing, real-time updates, or multi-channel price synchronisation.

Complex B2B and B2C Pricing Structures

• Managing wholesale and retail pricing in one system is difficult.

• Different customer groups require custom pricing rules, tiered discounts, and contract-based pricing.

• Retail price rounding for in-store tags doesn’t align with wholesale pricing needs.

Manual Pricing Updates & Inefficient Workflows

• Some companies still rely on spreadsheets for pricing updates, making the process slow and error-prone.

• Price approvals and supplier updates lack automation, requiring manual review for manufacturer-recommended prices.

Lack of Centralised Pricing Visibility

• There is no single source of truth for pricing across different sales channels.

• It is difficult to track how pricing rules apply to different customer groups and product categories.

High Volume of Price Updates Without Automation

• Businesses dealing with millions of product updates daily struggle to apply price changes efficiently.

• Without real-time synchronisation, displayed prices risk being outdated, leading to customer dissatisfaction.

Regional Pricing & Tax Compliance Issues

• Businesses operating in multiple regions face price sensitivity differences, requiring localised pricing strategies.

• Tax regulations and trade compliance add complexity, requiring integration with custom pricing components.

No Structured Pricing Logic or Rules-Based Automation

• Many retailers lack the infrastructure for assigning pricing rules, leading to manual profit calculations and adjustments.

• Pricing decisions are often made without clear automation strategies, making it difficult to scale.

Fragmented Pricing Across Multiple Systems

• Retail and wholesale pricing are managed separately, causing data inconsistencies.

• Pricing isn’t integrated into ERP systems due to licensing issues or outdated practices.

No Integration with Third-Party Data Sources

• Businesses want to connect with external APIs to fetch product attributes and price data, but their systems lack integration capabilities.

Slow Time-to-Market for Pricing Changes

• Manually adjusting prices for new products, promotions, or supplier changes slows down business agility.

• Retailers struggle to launch new pricing strategies quickly due to system limitations.

How a PIM Can Help Solve Pricing Challenges

With the right tools, you can simplify the pricing management process and maintain pricing consistency without the manual hassle.

With Bluestone PIM, users get the benefits of a true best-of-breed Product Information Management (PIM) solution while also being empowered to easily expand their capabilities through our Extension Hub, where they can choose from a range of ready-to-use and integrated PBCs (Packaged Business Capabilities).

This includes our Price Manager - an advanced feature that helps businesses organise, automate, and manage pricing effortlessly.

A PIM system can significantly enhance e-commerce management by centralising and streamlining both product information and pricing data, leading to greater efficiency.

This ensures:

• Accurate and consistent pricing across all platforms

• Stronger price integrity, preventing discrepancies that confuse customers

• Seamless automation, reducing the risk of manual errors

• Faster implementation of new pricing strategies, enabling greater business agility and quicker responses to market changes

Keep reading to explore the technology behind the Price Manager feature and its key capabilities.

Flexible Price Rules & Advanced Pricing Logic

One of the key challenges in multi-channel pricing management in retail is the inability to define complex pricing structures for different customer groups. 

Bluestone PIM’s Price Manager feature provides a rule-based pricing system, enabling businesses to:

• Set customer-specific pricing – apply different price structures for wholesalers, franchises, and direct retail customers.

• Manage base prices with markups or discounts – define cost price, RRP, and discount rules to control margins effectively.

• Support volume-based pricing – apply price ranges that adjust dynamically based on purchase quantity.

• Enable period-based pricing – set promotional prices for specific timeframes, ensuring limited-time offers are automatically activated and deactivated.

• Use intelligent rounding rules – ensure B2C-facing prices round to consumer-friendly values (e.g., £9.97 rounded to £9.99).

• Apply fallback pricing – avoid pricing gaps by defining default prices when specific rules don’t apply.

• Assign pricing rules at both product and category levels – enables businesses to control pricing across entire product ranges with fewer manual adjustments.

How This Solves Key Challenges?

• Provides clear price differentiation between B2B and B2C customer groups.

• Automates complex discounting and promotional pricing for different sales channels.

• Ensures rounded retail pricing for in-store displays while keeping wholesale pricing unrounded.

API-First Integration & External Data Connectivity

Bluestone PIM is built on the MACH architecture and follows a microservices and API-first approach, making it easy to connect with external pricing systems, e-commerce platforms, and third-party data sources.

Key integration capabilities include:

• Pull pricing data from external systems via API – businesses can get real-time supplier prices without manual imports.

• Seamless ERP integration for pricing updates – customers can manage both cost and selling prices based on their specific requirements.

• External pricing source compatibility - enables companies to leverage Price Management in MAPI to fetch, post, or update prices from Bluestone or external systems.

How This Solves Key Challenges?

• Enables real-time price updates from suppliers, reducing manual data entry.

• Ensures pricing consistency across all platforms, including e-commerce stores, marketplaces, and ERP systems.

• Supports regional pricing strategies, ensuring businesses can implement tax and trade compliance rules per country.

Automation & Workflow-Based Price Management

Bluestone PIM enables businesses to automate price updates and apply business logic-driven adjustments through event-driven workflows.

Automation & workflow features include:

• Automated price calculations – dynamically updates pricing based on predefined business rules.

• Event-driven workflows – updates prices automatically when conditions such as stock changes, supplier price updates, or promotions are met.

• Bulk import & mapping tools – matches supplier-provided pricing data to Bluestone PIM’s internal pricing structure.

• Task-based approval system – internal teams can review and approve price changes before they go live.

• Role-based access control – ensures only authorised personnel can edit or approve pricing updates.

How This Solves Key Challenges?

• Reduces manual workload by automating price adjustments based on supplier cost changes.

• Helps businesses launch promotions faster by enabling timed price updates.

• Provides a structured approval process to prevent unauthorised or accidental pricing changes.

Why Bluestone PIM is a Smart Choice for Pricing Management

Bluestone PIM’s Price Manager provides a scalable and flexible solution for multi-channel pricing, integrating automation and API-driven updates to ensure pricing accuracy and efficiency.

With advanced pricing logic, real-time updates, and structured workflows, businesses can simplify complex pricing structures, eliminate manual errors, and maintain consistency across all sales channels.

Looking to optimise your retail pricing strategy? Bluestone PIM’s Price Manager delivers the automation, accuracy, and scalability your business needs to grow. Contact us today!