The right pricing strategy is the cornerstone of any eCommerce business, big or small. Price is often the deciding factor of a purchase due to the abundance of price-comparison apps which allow shoppers to find the most competitive price point within minutes. But a well thought out, dynamic pricing plan can help attract more traffic to your Marketplace listings, impact the customer’s buying decision, and ultimately help you grow a successful business.
Whether you’re a seasoned seller or you just joined the Marketplace community, keep reading to get some ideas about how to define your Walmart pricing strategy and how to set and maintain your prices so you can stay ahead of the competition in a world where online prices are constantly changing.
1 Set prices that deliver on the Every Day Low Price (EDLP) promise
At Walmart, we are committed to helping people save money, so they can live better. To achieve this goal, we follow the Every Day Low Price (EDLP) strategy because we know that everyday low prices can help keep customers happy–and happy customers come back.
However, EDLP is more than a pricing strategy, it is our commitment to offer a fair price every day without coupons, promotions or special discounts. It helps create trust and can help reduce the customer’s desire to shop around and compare prices with other retailers.
As you set up prices for your Walmart Marketplace catalog, deliver on the EDLP promise to help build trust with Walmart.com customers.
2 Help increase your chances of winning customers when you win the Buy Box
On Walmart.com, when the same item is sold by multiple sellers, all offers are organized on the same product page. An offer with the best value and shopping experience is featured as the Buy Box winning listing. As a Marketplace seller, you need to consider various strategies to help ensure your products win the Buy Box so you can help draw more attention to your products and drive conversion.
To help your chances of winning the Buy Box, consider improvements in the following areas:
Item price: Customers come to Walmart.com to find the lowest prices and the best deals. Your offer should be competitive with other listings to help promote a positive customer experience.
Shipping speed and cost: Fast delivery and free shipping are known conversion drivers as customers have come to expect to receive their orders quickly when they shop. Consider joining Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) or participating in programs like Walmart’s TwoDay and ThreeDay delivery to offer free shipping and to deliver orders quickly. We encourage sellers to offer free shipping for all shipping methods.
In-stock rate: Keeping items in stock means they’ll always be available for customers when they search Walmart.com. Make sure your inventory is always updated, especially for fast-moving products.
Monitor the Buy Box Report in Seller Center frequently to keep an eye on your win rate so you can aim to improve it if necessary. API users can subscribe to push notifications to get notified when items win or lose the Buy Box.
3 Remain competitive with dynamic pricing using the Repricer
The Repricer is a powerful Seller Center tool that enables automatic price adjustments for items in your catalog. The algorithm not only pays attention to Walmart.com prices, but it also helps you stay competitive with offers on other eCommerce sites, too. When you enable the Repricer, you no longer have to worry about checking and manually updating prices for all your items. Simply enable the tool for any SKUs you’d like.
You can choose from 3 different preset Repricer strategies–External Price, Buy Box Price, and Competitive Price, or create custom strategies and set your own price minimums for a particular item.
External Price: Stand out from the competition by beating or meeting prices on other eCommerce platforms.
Buy Box Price: The Repricer will automatically make updates to help you beat the Buy Box price on Walmart.com.
Competitive Price: This strategy combines the logic of the first two strategy rules so you can compete with whichever price is lowest.
Once you assign your items to a strategy, the Repricer will automatically make updates based on varying market conditions so you can maintain competitive pricing more effectively.
4 Call out great deals with the strike-through pricing and promo flags
Setting up promotional pricing is a great way to help increase discoverability and traffic to your listings. On Walmart.com, products set with promotional pricing can be identified with a ‘Reduced Price‘ or a ‘Clearance‘ flag. This will be displayed on the product and item pages along with a strike through the original price when the savings are 10% or greater.
Occasionally, Walmart will promote special savings events online and in-store during busy shopping seasons like the holidays. These key moments are the perfect time for sellers to delight customers with promo pricing on best-selling items to potentially benefit from additional exposure when increased traffic is expected.
Remember to plan your promotions in advance because it can take up to 4 hours for the promo price to update on Walmart.com and the start and end times of your promotions are in Universal Time Zone (UTC) and not in your local time zone.
Keep an eye out in your inbox for updates on upcoming Walmart campaigns and events.
5 Effectively troubleshoot catalog issues related to pricing
Because you are responsible for setting and maintaining your own prices on Walmart.com, it’s important to be proactive and monitor your prices frequently via the Pricing Opportunities Dashboard. The dashboard displays the price of your items alongside competing offers on Walmart Marketplace, which items are losing the Buy Box, and the potential sales you could be missing out on. If there’s an opportunity to make your prices more competitive, you can update the items individually or in bulk right from the dashboard.
If your prices are highly uncompetitive, or if market conditions change and your pricing falls into the unacceptable range per Walmart’s Pricing Rules and Automatic Unpublishing policy, Walmart will automatically unpublish your listing. But troubleshooting unpublished items is easy with the Unpublished Items Dashboard. You can quickly address items with pricing issues right from the dashboard in Seller Center or API users can subscribe to push notifications to get notified when items are unpublished and update price via Walmart APIs.
We recommend enabling the ‘Competitive Price’ Repricer strategy to help reduce your chances of encountering price issues and to help ensure your prices are always aligned with market conditions and your competitors.
