Dynamic pricing is reshaping the e-commerce landscape, offering businesses real-time adaptability while presenting unique opportunities and challenges for online shoppers.
According to a new report by Smartproxy, e-commerce platforms in the U.S. and Canada are adjusting prices with unprecedented frequency. Insights from the industry-first e-commerce Maturity Index reveal the growing scale of this practice and some of the most recent advancements.
Sellers leverage various tools to adjust prices based on market trends, supply and demand, and competitor activity. For businesses, this means maximizing revenue potential and maintaining a competitive edge. On the consumer side, savvy shoppers can benefit from price variability, seizing deals during low-demand periods or promotional campaigns.
The report ranks the top five e-commerce platforms with the most frequent price adjustments. Amazon.com leads with 12.6 daily price changes, setting a high standard for dynamic pricing in the U.S. In contrast, Canada’s Amazon.ca averages only 4.3 daily changes, with Walmart.ca slightly higher with 7 price changes. This disparity highlights the varying pace of market adaptation between the two countries, sparking debates on how dynamic pricing influences competitiveness and shopper behavior.
For U.S. shoppers, platforms like Amazon.com offer frequent opportunities to secure lower prices during demand dips but can also easily overpay. On the other hand, Canadian consumers wonder whether slower price adjustments reduce their ability to benefit from dynamic pricing or if they win by not having to investigate if the discount is lower than the original price.
More sellers have started to leverage AI-powered repricing tools that track competitors and other set parameters. However, web scraping still plays a pivotal role in the e-commerce industry. By gathering real-time data from various platforms, web scraping solutions allow businesses to track competitor prices, market trends and demand fluctuations. The report also explored how the scraping request count grew in accordance with peak
shopping festivals
Top Five eCommerce Platforms with the Most Frequent Price Adjustments
eCommerce Platform Price Changes per Day
BestBuy.com 2.6
Wayfair.com 3.6
Amazon.ca 4.3
Walmart.ca 7
Amazon.com 12.6
Scraping Requests Compared with Peak Shopping Festivals
Peak Shopping Festival or Season Growth in Scraping Requests
Amazon Prime days (July 11-12) +22%
Back-to-school season (late August – early September) +31%
Halloween (October 31) +19%
Singles’ Day (November 11) +23%
Black Friday (November 23) +64%
Christmas (December 23 – 26) +46%
Source: Smartproxy eCommerce Maturity Index ’24
Vaidotas Juknys is the head of Commerce at Smartproxy, a leader in web data collection solutions. With extensive experience in eCommerce strategies and data-driven decision-making, Juknys oversees initiatives that empower businesses to harness the power of web scraping.
Did You Know: While the report measured the prices of 12 high- and low-value products. For example, Amazon.com has more than 353 million products, meaning there could be significant price fluctuations across millions of listings. And for best-selling products, the price could even change a few times per hour, aggregating to more than 100 daily price changes on a single item!
