Project Description
Detailed prices, big supermarkets
Case Study | Retail | Food & Beverages
One of the largest food distribution groups in Spain, with a strong network of traditional supermarkets and Cash&Carry, is transforming its pricing strategy with flipflow. It monitors in real time, geolocated and at shop level, the unit prices of thousands of competing products. The result? Precise control of the market to stay ahead.
Challenge
Covalco, with its dual business model – proximity supermarkets and Cash&Carry – faced a key challenge in price monitoring. The company needed to analyse the price per unit and price per kilo of its products to ensure its competitiveness in the market. However, the sector was complicated:
Differences between unit and pack prices
In Cash&Carry, customers buy in large volumes, whereas in traditional supermarkets, products are often purchased individually. Comparing prices between these two formats without a proper system made it difficult to make strategic decisions.
Exclusive formats
More and more manufacturers are developing specific formats for each distribution chain, which made it more complex to analyse reference prices in the market.
Consumer behaviour and reduflation
Customers often look at the lowest total price, without considering the actual cost per unit of measurement. This could lead to a misperception of more affordable prices in the competition.
To overcome these challenges, Covalco needed a tool that would allow the company to monitor and compare prices efficiently and accurately.
Solution
Accurate comparison between unit and pack prices
Covalco was able, with the help of flipflow, to analyse unit prices independently of pack formats. The platform breaks down the information, allowing a fair comparison of costs per unit and per kilo/gram. This ensures that Covalco’s pricing strategies are competitive in both business formats.
Impacted teams:
Control of exclusive competitor formats
Flipflow allows Covalco to monitor the unique formats used by its growing number of competitors. The platform provides detailed information on both product-by-product SKUs and private label vs. private label. All this data allows Covalco to adjust its strategy and stay competitive in a market where unique formats play a crucial role in price perception.
Impacted teams:
Advanced consumer behaviour analysis
Through detailed data and real-time trend analysis, flipflow helps Covalco understand how customers perceive prices. For example, they can discover whether consumers are impacted by reduflation, choosing a product with a smaller quantity or size, even though the price remains the same (or is even higher, in some cases).
This allows them to adjust pricing strategies to highlight the real value of products and counteract the effects of reduflation, optimising both price perception and profitability.
Impacted teams:
3. Results
Since the implementation of flipflow, Covalco achieved a significant improvement in its ability to analyse prices and manage its competitive offer. The platform enabled a more accurate comparison of unit and kilo/gram prices, which optimised its pricing strategy both in its traditional supermarkets and in Cash & Carry. In addition, by being able to monitor the exclusive formats of competitors such as Mercadona, Makro or Alcampo, Covalco adjusted the prices of its MDD assortment to stay ahead of the market. As a result, a competitive improvement of 18% was observed in its private label assortment.
This tool also helped the chain to better understand consumer behaviour, especially in terms of price perception, which contributed to increasing competitiveness in its outlets. As a result of these improvements, Covalco experienced a 30% increase in the profitability of its key products (shopping basket) and in customer satisfaction.
90%
Reduced time spent on store checks
18%
Competitive improvement in the MDD assortment
30%
Rise in profitability of its key products
3. Results
Since the implementation of flipflow, Covalco achieved a significant improvement in its ability to analyse prices and manage its competitive offer. The platform enabled a more accurate comparison of unit and kilo/gram prices, which optimised its pricing strategy both in its traditional supermarkets and in Cash & Carry. In addition, by being able to monitor the exclusive formats of competitors such as Mercadona, Makro or Alcampo, Covalco adjusted the prices of its MDD assortment to stay ahead of the market. As a result, a competitive improvement of 18% was observed in its private label assortment.
This tool also helped the chain to better understand consumer behaviour, especially in terms of price perception, which contributed to increasing competitiveness in its outlets. As a result of these improvements, Covalco experienced a 30% increase in the profitability of its key products (shopping basket) and in customer satisfaction.
90%
Reduced time spent on store checks
18%
Competitive improvement in the MDD assortment
30%
Increased profitability of its key products
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“Flipflow allows us to react from the sales department and ensure our offer in all channels by having our assortment available and without stock-outs in any postal code in Spain. Its daily use ensures that we don’t lose sales due to stock and assortment shortages.”
“In our case we analyze the products of our categories in 45 retailers in 9 countries to have quality information that we use in competitive manufacturing trends for customers, knowing the average price per gram of many products per country and we also detect potential winner products to add to our offer.”
“We have really noticed the improved control over our recommended prices. Manually it was impossible to maintain a price corridor on so many online channels and that brought us a lot of friction. Now we detect unauthorized sales and sellers on marketplaces that cause us conflicts with our customers.”
“We can analyze our own and competitors’ price movements on a daily basis and have improved our revenue by adjusting prices on a daily basis in terms of pricing and promotional strategy.”
“This is definitely the future of retail. Flipflow gives us an improvement in the quality and structure of the information and considerable savings over traditional market research from well-known consulting firms that sell aggregate data without detail including information we don’t need.”
“Flipflow is core to us in setting prices on a daily basis for more than 60,000 SKUs and maintaining our automatic repricing system in a very competitive industry.”