Repricing
Repricing is the automated adjustment of a seller's product prices in response to competitors' prices, usually according to preset rules or an algorithm. It is most common on marketplaces such as Amazon and bol, where many sellers share one product listing and the marketplace picks a default seller — making price a directly measurable battleground.
Rule-based vs algorithmic
Rule-based repricers follow instructions like 'always €0.05 below the lowest competitor, but never under my floor price'. Algorithmic repricers optimize toward a goal — winning the buy box at the highest possible price, for instance — and decide the exact price themselves. Both depend on the same two safeguards: a floor price that protects margin, and correct competitor data to react to.
The risks
Two repricers set to undercut each other create a price spiral downward until one hits its floor — automated price wars are a structural driver of price erosion. The reverse failure mode also exists: reacting to a wrongly scraped competitor price (a bundle price, a per-unit price, another variant) propagates one bad data point straight into your own pricing.
Repricing needs monitoring first
A repricer is only as good as the competitor prices it sees. That is why price monitoring is the layer underneath: knowing reliably what competitors charge, on which shop, for exactly which product, before any automation acts on it.
How PricePatrol fits in
PricePatrol deliberately focuses on that underlying layer: dependable competitor price monitoring with honest failure reporting. It does not change your prices for you — it feeds the tools that do. Complete price history exports to CSV on every plan, and the read-only API (Pro plan) serves current and historical competitor prices per product, so your repricing engine or in-house scripts rest on numbers that are actually right.