# Competitive pricing strategy Human Guide

## What This Is For
Build an evidence-based competitive pricing strategy for ecommerce products. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for competitive research: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Competitive pricing strategy agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for competitive pricing strategy.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Competitive pricing strategy guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Normalize competitor offers by variant, pack size, condition, shipping, discounts, and seller type.
- Calculate price floors and contribution-margin scenarios from seller-supplied costs.
- Map budget, value, parity, and premium positions without assuming the cheapest offer wins.
- Design regular, launch, promotional, bundle, quantity, and channel-specific price architecture.
- Create response rules for competitor discounts, stockouts, new entrants, and price wars.
- Separate pricing recommendations from MAP, resale-price, tax, consumer-protection, and marketplace-policy decisions.
- Produce an implementation plan with owners, evidence, monitoring, and stop conditions.
- product, SKU, variant, pack size, condition, included items, and target customer;
- platform, marketplace, currency, tax treatment, fulfillment method, and seller type;
- current list price, realized selling price, discounts, coupons, shipping charged, and channel-specific prices;
- COGS, inbound freight, duties, packaging, fulfillment, payment, referral, affiliate, ad, return, and other variable costs;
- target contribution dollars or margin, inventory constraints, launch stage, and business goal;

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Installation, Capabilities, Usage Examples, Inputs and Collection, Workflow, Establish the Evidence Boundary, Normalize Comparable Offers, Build the Economic Guardrails, Map the Price-Value Landscape, Design the Price Architecture.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- Treat competitor prices as point-in-time observations. Do not invent historical price changes, sales, market share, conversion, fees, elasticity, or customer willingness to pay.
- Show every included cost, rate, source, and assumption. Run base, downside, and promotion-stack scenarios. Do not call gross margin, markup, or contribution margin interchangeable.
- Identify clusters and gaps, but do not label an empty price band an opportunity without demand evidence. Explain whether the seller can support the selected position through controllable proof.
- minimum approved price and required contribution;
- Do not use an inflated reference price to manufacture a discount. Verify MAP, MSRP, price-display, tax, and consumer-protection requirements with qualified counsel or current official guidance.
- | Event | Diagnose first | Allowed response | Do not cross |
- Set a review date and explicit keep, revise, or revert thresholds. Do not attribute a result to price alone when traffic, ads, stock, content, seasonality, or promotions changed at the same time.
- Do not recommend coordination with competitors, deceptive reference prices, price gouging, discriminatory pricing, or misleading variant pricing.

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Competitive pricing strategy human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the nexscope-ai/ecommerce-skills skill entry for `competitive-pricing-strategy`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Competitive Pricing Strategy

Turn comparable-offer evidence, unit economics, and brand positioning into a SKU-level price architecture, competitor-response policy, and controlled rollout plan.

## Installation

```bash
npx skills add nexscope-ai/eCommerce-Skills --skill competitive-pricing-strategy -g
```

## Capabilities

- Normalize competitor offers by variant, pack size, condition, shipping, discounts, and seller type.
- Calculate price floors and contribution-margin scenarios from seller-supplied costs.
- Map budget, value, parity, and premium positions without assuming the cheapest offer wins.
- Design regular, launch, promotional, bundle, quantity, and channel-specific price architecture.
- Create response rules for competitor discounts, stockouts, new entrants, and price wars.
- Separate pricing recommendations from MAP, resale-price, tax, consumer-protection, and marketplace-policy decisions.
- Produce an implementation plan with owners, evidence, monitoring, and stop conditions.

## Usage Examples

```text
Compare these six competitor offers and tell me where my product should be priced.
```

```text
Build a launch pricing strategy for my premium skincare product on Amazon and Shopify.
```

```text
My main competitor cut price by 15%. Should I match them or hold my position?
```

```text
Create a regular, promotional, and bundle price architecture for these five SKUs.
```

## Inputs and Collection

Use supplied evidence first. Collect:

- product, SKU, variant, pack size, condition, included items, and target customer;
- platform, marketplace, currency, tax treatment, fulfillment method, and seller type;
- current list price, realized selling price, discounts, coupons, shipping charged, and channel-specific prices;
- COGS, inbound freight, duties, packaging, fulfillment, payment, referral, affiliate, ad, return, and other variable costs;
- target contribution dollars or margin, inventory constraints, launch stage, and business goal;
- comparable competitor offers with source URL, capture date, variant, availability, delivery terms, ratings, and visible promotion;
- brand position, differentiators, authorized-dealer or MAP constraints, and planned promotions.

If material inputs are missing, ask one consolidated follow-up. When the seller cannot provide them, continue with a provisional framework and mark every blocked calculation or decision.

## Workflow

### 1. Establish the Evidence Boundary

List the pages, exports, cost sheets, and seller facts actually inspected. Classify inputs as:

- **Confirmed:** directly supported by inspected evidence.
- **Assumption:** seller-approved placeholder used for a scenario.
- **Unknown:** missing information that prevents a reliable conclusion.

Treat competitor prices as point-in-time observations. Do not invent historical price changes, sales, market share, conversion, fees, elasticity, or customer willingness to pay.

### 2. Normalize Comparable Offers

Compare like with like. For each offer, record:

- exact variant, quantity, size, condition, and included accessories;
- item price, mandatory shipping, visible seller-funded discount, and displayed final price;
- seller, fulfillment method, delivery promise, availability, and membership requirement;
- review count and rating only when visibly confirmed;
- capture time and source.

Calculate unit and delivered price when inputs permit:

```text
Delivered Price = Item Price - Seller-Funded Discount + Mandatory Shipping
Unit Price = Delivered Price / Comparable Units
```