Marketplace channels like Amazon and Walmart have a Buy Box, and your repricing strategy revolves around winning it. But if you sell on your own store (Shopify, BigCommerce, or eBay), the game is different. You control the pricing, and what matters is staying competitive while protecting your margins. That is why we built two distinct pricing approaches designed specifically for own-store channels.
Competitor-based pricing
Competitor-based pricing sets your price relative to what your competitors are charging. It works hand in hand with the new competitor URL monitoring feature. Once you add competitor URLs to your listings, the system tracks their prices and automatically adjusts yours based on the rules you define.
You choose from three positioning modes. "Beat lowest competitor" prices you below the cheapest competitor to win the sale. "Match lowest competitor" sets your price exactly equal to theirs. "Stay above lowest competitor" keeps your price higher, which works well for premium brands that want to maintain perceived value.
For example, if your cheapest competitor is selling a product at $49.99 and you choose to beat them by $2.00, your price is set to $47.99. If you choose to stay above by 5%, your price becomes $52.49. The difference can be a fixed amount or a percentage.
A price floor protects you when competitors drop their prices unreasonably low. You can set a manual floor (an absolute minimum) or have the system calculate one based on your product cost. For instance, you might set a floor that guarantees at least 15% ROI regardless of what competitors do.
Cost-based pricing
Cost-based pricing calculates your selling price directly from your product cost and a profit target. This is ideal when you sell niche products with few or no direct competitors, or when you simply want predictable, guaranteed margins on every sale.
There are three ways to define your profit target. Return on Investment (ROI) adds a percentage on top of your cost. For example, a $10 product with a 20% ROI target becomes $12.00. Profit Margin sets your profit as a percentage of the selling price, so a $10 product with a 30% margin target becomes $14.29. Fixed Profit adds a flat amount per unit, so a $10 product with a $3.00 profit target becomes $13.00.
With cost-based pricing, you do not need to set up competitor URL monitoring or worry about a separate price floor. The pricing formula guarantees your target margin by design. If your product cost changes (for example, a supplier raises prices), the selling price updates automatically to maintain your profit target.
When to use each approach
Use competitor-based pricing if you sell products that many other stores also carry and you want to actively compete on price. This works best for categories like electronics, household goods, or popular branded products where customers compare prices across multiple stores before buying.
Use cost-based pricing if you sell unique, handmade, or private-label products where there is no direct competitor to compare against. It is also a good fit if you want simple, consistent margins without the complexity of tracking competitor prices.
Compare price support
Both strategies support compare price (the strikethrough "was" price shown to customers on Shopify and other platforms). You can set it automatically based on the previous price, as a fixed markup above your current price, manually per listing, or disable it entirely. For example, if your price drops from $39.99 to $34.99, the compare price can automatically show "was $39.99" to create urgency.
Easy to switch
You can switch between competitor-based and cost-based pricing at any time in the strategy wizard. Your existing settings are preserved so you can experiment with both approaches and find what works best for your business.