Definition:
Product matching is the process of identifying identical or comparable products across different retailers, marketplaces, or catalogs — so their prices can be compared like-for-like. It matches your SKU to the same or a genuinely similar item sold elsewhere, rather than relying on manual guesswork or a shared barcode that may not exist.
Why It Matters:
- Competitor price monitoring is only accurate if you’re comparing the same product, not a lookalike or a different variant.
- Matching identical products enables direct price parity rules; matching similar products enables competitive positioning even without an exact match.
- Poor matching silently corrupts every downstream pricing decision — a repricing rule built on a bad match will move price against the wrong signal.
Example:
An identical 500ml bottle of the same shampoo brand sold by three competitors is matched exactly, so your price stays within a fixed gap of theirs. A near-identical but unbranded alternative is matched as “similar,” feeding a looser competitive-positioning rule rather than a strict price-parity rule.