Why is Knowing Your Competitors’ Product Assortment Crucial in eCommerce?

Researching competitors’ product assortment is a crucial step when performing a comprehensive competitive analysis. This is especially important in eCommerce and online retail environments.

To stay competitive, it’s essential to understand what your rivals are selling, how their assortment compares to yours, and where you can improve. That’s where product assortment benchmarking comes in.

In this article, we’ll break down what product assortment really means, why competitor insights matter, and how to overcome the common challenges of tracking the competition.

Product assortment – The basics

Product assortment (alternatively referred to as merchandise mix) is the range of products a retailer offers to customers. There are two components to it: depth and breadth. 

Depth refers to the number of different options with a single category. In terms of depth, product assortment can either be deep or narrow. Think in terms of sizes, colors, or styles. A deep assortment means a retailer has more options. A narrow one means fewer.

Breadth is the number of different product categories you carry. A store with wide breadth might sell clothing, accessories, and home decor. A store with narrow breadth might focus only on shoes.

Additionally, you may often hear people talking about product assortment variety. Usually, it refers to a combination of both depth and breadth.

When determining your own product assortment, balance is key. Here we refer to the balance between what your target audience wants versus what makes sense for you brand and business. 

However, in today’s eCommerce markets focusing only on your own product assortment many not be enough. You need to be aware of your competitors’ inventory as well. When evaluating your competitor’s product assortment, start from the basics – depth and breadth. This will enable you to notice their gaps and opportunities for your own store.

Why is benchmarking your product assortment against your competitors’ important?

There are numerous benefits and reasons why you should track your competitors’ assortment and benchmark it against your own. 

Knowing your competitors’ product assortment gives you a clearer picture of the market. It helps you understand where you stand and how you can improve. Benchmarking reveals both opportunities and threats, before they impact your bottom line.

Determining your market positioning & differentiation

Knowing what products there are on a certain website is useful whether it’s a website of your competitor if you’re a retailer or of your reseller if you’re a brand. 

If you are an online retailer, you will be able to know how different your competitors’ market positioning is to yours. Or at the very least, you will be able to get a good feeling of it.

Identifying gaps in inventory

Looking at your competitors’ assortments can highlight what you might be missing. Are there trending products your competitors stock but you don’t? That could mean lost sales.

Benchmarking helps you spot those gaps. You can then adjust your inventory to better meet customer demand and stay relevant.

Also, it can highlight the items you may have and your competitors may not. This is where you may have an opportunity to increase prices and revenue.

Setting competitive pricing strategy

Product assortment and pricing go hand in hand. If your competitors offer similar items at lower prices, or bundle them differently, it can hurt your sales.

By analyzing their assortments, you can fine-tune your pricing strategy. This ensures you’re not just competitive, but also protecting your margins.

Difficulties you may encounter when gathering competitor product assortment data

It is clear why the analysis of competitor product assortment is important and what are the uses of it. What many who start to analyze their competitors’ product assortment don’t think about are the difficulties of this process.

Let’s go over some of the most commonly encountered ones and see how they can be overcome.

But don’t worry, as we list the challenges and difficulties, we will also give you tips on how to overcome them.

Limited visibility

When looking at a competitor’s product assortment online, you may encounter several obstacles. The first one is regional availability. An online retailer may not (and likely doesn’t) have the same assortment for different markets they are present in.

Other visibility issues are related to the fact that some products may be visible only when logged in or may be even placed behind a paywall (e.g. in a subscription-based eCommerce business model).

Either way, if you alone sit at your computer and try to get all of your competitor’s products, you will have to deal with some visibility difficulties.

A solution to this would be to invest into proxies and spend time visiting your competitors’ websites using different location proxies. Alternatively you could use web or price scraping tools or competitive intelligence platforms that simulate user behavior. These can help you gather more complete data and save significant amounts of time without relying on manual browsing.

Changes in product assortment

Product assortments can change rapidly as businesses launch new products or discontinue old ones.

Retailers may also alter their offerings seasonally. This can make it challenging to keep up-to-date with competitors’ ever-evolving product ranges.

If this is something characteristic for your industry, you may need to monitor your competitors’ sites regularly and perform matching multiple times throughout the year.

Also, consider setting up automated alerts or using tools that track product changes over time to keep your insights fresh.

Price variations and promotions

In our experience, almost all online retailers who match their products with their competitors’ also monitor competitor prices. 

However, promotions, discounts, and dynamic pricing can make it hard to pin down a clear price point for comparison. A product may appear cheaper temporarily, only to return to normal pricing later.

This can only be solved by continuously monitoring your competitors’ prices at a regular interval. What interval will that be is going to depend on the competitiveness of your industry. Some industries, such as musical equipment require daily price checks. Others, such as luxury items (especially jewelry) require less frequent price checks at a weekly or even a monthly interval.

Data overload

Depending on your industry there may be many websites and even more products you need to track down.

Truth be told, even a single competitor can offer hundreds or thousands of SKUs. Sorting through all that data manually can be overwhelming and time-consuming.

Drowning (mentally) in the sea of competitor product data is a common scenario. Determining which data is most relevant to your business goals can be a daunting task.

Too much information from multiple sources (price data, product specifications, reviews, etc.) can lead to analysis paralysis, where it’s difficult to determine what’s most important for decision-making.

The way you deal with this is by setting clear objectives and by prioritizing data points.

When it comes to clear objectives you need to decide first why you are performing the analysis. What do you want to get out of the data you gather? Opportunities where you may increase prices because you have a product in stock and your competitors do not? Or perhaps you want a general feel of what categories your competitors are focusing on? 

When you have answers to these questions, you will also know what to prioritize.

Conclusion

Knowing your competitors’ product assortment isn’t just about spying on their offerings. It’s about gaining important insights that can help you fine-tune your own strategy.

This is because your own product assortment is a strategic asset, not just a list of items. Knowing how it stacks up against the competition helps you make smarter decisions and spot opportunities before they slip away.

Benchmarking reveals gaps, shapes pricing strategies, and strengthens your market position. While gathering data has its challenges, the right tools and tactics can make it manageable (and even scalable).

And there’s one thing we haven’t mentioned yet. We can take over the whole data gathering & matching process for you. We have a product url matching service which serves exactly this purpose. Let us know if you need any help!