Competitor Price Monitoring Setup Checklist
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A step-by-step checklist for launching a competitor price and promo tracking program that stays small enough to read and consistent enough to trust.

[ ] Name your primary competitive set: the businesses customers actually mention when they say they saw it cheaper somewhere else
[ ] Keep a short secondary list of competitors for monthly review, and keep it out of the daily view
[ ] Pick your key value items: best sellers, entry-level anchors, and the products that show up most in comparison shopping
[ ] Match each tracked product to the competitor's equivalent listing, noting variant, pack size, and unit of measure
[ ] Decide which channels to track per competitor: their own store, marketplaces, and any regional storefront that matters to your customers
[ ] Set a collection cadence per product tier, more frequent for anchors and less frequent for the long tail
[ ] Note the detection lag you can live with for each tier so the cadence matches the actual risk of missing a move
[ ] Fix one capture rule and stick to it: list price, shipping treatment, tax treatment, and time of day
[ ] Check that your own listings are captured with the same treatment before you compare any gap
[ ] Record promotions in their own fields: mechanic, depth, start date, end date, and conditions such as minimum spend
[ ] Compute an effective price after promotions so list price and promo price never sit in the same column
[ ] Validate every collection run: flag missing prices, unit mismatches, and jumps large enough to suggest a page change rather than a price change
[ ] Store history from day one so you can tell a permanent repositioning from a promo that repeats every month
[ ] Choose your price index basis, competitor average or lowest competitor, and use the same basis on every report
[ ] Write down the gap that matters for each product tier, and the threshold that triggers a review rather than a reaction
[ ] Set alert thresholds that fire rarely enough that people still read them when they do
[ ] Log each competitor promotion on a calendar so repeat timing becomes visible over several months
[ ] Draft a short response playbook covering a competitor price cut, a new promotion, and a competitor stockout
[ ] Decide in advance which moves you will not respond to, and write that down too
[ ] Assign one owner for the data and one owner for the decisions, even if both are the same person today
[ ] Build the Monday dashboard around a handful of metrics the team will open without being reminded
[ ] Schedule a weekly review that ends with a decision log, including the decision to do nothing
[ ] Review the tracked set every quarter and remove the products and competitors nobody has looked at