Repricing
The merchantCENTRAL hub keeps a central Competitor Prices table: per item, channel, and source the lowest market price and a reference price with timestamp. Marketplace connectors fill it automatically (e.g. Amazon from BuyBox data); manual maintenance or your own sources work just as well. The Price Engine turns it into a configurable strategy per price list.
Strategy per price list
You find the fields in the Price Calculation Setup:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Competitor Strategy | Ignore (default) · Match · Undercut · Premium |
| Competitor Offset % / Amount | How far below (undercut) or above (premium) the market price; percent wins over amount |
| Competitor Min. Margin % | The floor of the repricing: this is how far competition may push the margin down, at most |
| Competitor Max Age (Hours) | Stale market prices do not steer (default: 24 h) |
| Competitor Channel Code | If the competitor prices are stored under a different channel code than the price list code |
| Allow Competitor Events | Governance: whether marketplace connectors may additionally intervene through the pipeline events. Off = only the strategy configured here drives the repricing |
The corridor
Every strategy works inside the corridor:
- never below the minimum price and the competitor minimum margin
- never above the list price cap
- and behind it the safety limits still check every price
"The repricer priced us into ruin" structurally cannot happen — the price follows the market in both directions, but only within your limits.
Every adjustment carries its source
The calculation log shows every competitor adjustment with amount and source (e.g. AMAZON BuyBox) — repricing without a black box. That is the answer to the customer question "why 94.99 instead of 99.99?".
Where do the competitor prices come from?
| Source | Path |
|---|---|
| Marketplace connectors | e.g. the Amazon connector from BuyBox/market price notifications — automatic |
| Manual maintenance | the hub page Competitor Prices is directly editable |
| Your own sources | price portals or your own research write into the same table via API/import |
When a competitor price changes it takes effect with the item's next run — together with the price-written event after every write, channels react without polling.