Glossary

Pricing & e-commerce glossary

Plain-language definitions for the terms that come up when you're tracking competitor prices and automating your own.

API (Application Programming Interface): A way for software to talk to other software directly, without a human clicking through a UI. In pricing tools, an API lets you pull competitor data or read alert history programmatically instead of exporting files by hand.
Automated Repricing: Software that adjusts your product prices automatically based on rules you set — e.g. match the lowest competitor, or beat it by a fixed percentage — instead of someone changing prices by hand. A well-built system enforces a floor price so automation never sells below cost. See Features for how this works in practice.
Brand Monitoring: Tracking where and how your products are sold across the web, including by resellers you didn't directly authorize, to catch pricing or presentation that could damage your brand.
Buy Box: On marketplaces like Amazon, the "Buy Box" is the featured purchase button shown to most shoppers on a product listing page. When multiple sellers list the same product, the marketplace's own algorithm picks one seller to hold it — price is one of several factors, not the only one.
Competitor Price Monitoring: Regularly checking what competitors charge for the same or similar products, so pricing decisions are based on the current market instead of outdated assumptions. See how MarketPulse compares to other tools that do this.
Digital Shelf: The online equivalent of a physical store shelf — how your products actually appear to shoppers across every marketplace, search result and retailer site, not just your own storefront.
Dynamic Pricing: Pricing that changes based on real-world conditions — competitor prices, demand, stock levels — instead of staying fixed indefinitely. Automated repricing is one common way to implement dynamic pricing.
MAP (Minimum Advertised Price): A price floor a brand sets that resellers agree not to advertise below, even though the brand doesn't control what resellers actually charge at checkout. MAP monitoring catches resellers who advertise below that floor.
Margin Protection: Keeping automated pricing decisions from ever dropping below what a product actually costs to sell — usually enforced with a hard price floor tied to real cost, not just a guess.
Market Position: How your price compares to the competitors you track for the same product — cheaper, at parity, or pricier — usually summarized as an index or percentage rather than read off one comparison at a time.
Merchant of Record (MoR): A company that takes legal and financial responsibility for a transaction on a seller's behalf — handling tax compliance, chargebacks and billing support — instead of the seller processing payment directly. Lemon Squeezy and Paddle are examples.
MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price): The price a manufacturer recommends retailers sell a product at. Retailers aren't required to charge it — unlike MAP, which is typically an enforceable agreement, not just a suggestion.
Price Elasticity: How much demand for a product changes when its price changes. A product with high elasticity sees demand shift a lot with small price changes; one with low elasticity (e.g. no real substitute exists) doesn't move much either way.
Price Floor: The lowest price an automated repricing rule is allowed to set, usually tied to cost plus a minimum acceptable margin. Every MarketPulse repricing rule requires one — see Features.
Price Index: A single number summarizing how a whole catalog's prices compare to the market — e.g. "8% above competitors on average" — useful for spotting a trend at a glance instead of reviewing every product one by one.
Price Intelligence: The broader practice of collecting and analyzing competitor and market pricing data to inform pricing strategy — price monitoring and repricing are specific tools within it.
Price Matching: Setting your price to equal a competitor's price for the same product, either manually or via an automated rule.
Price Scraping: The technical process of reading price data off a web page — the same publicly displayed content a shopper sees in their own browser, not anything behind a login.
Price War: A cycle where competitors repeatedly undercut each other's prices, sometimes to the point where none of them are profitable — one reason a hard price floor on automated repricing genuinely matters.
Product Matching: Confirming that a listing on a competitor's site is actually the same product as one in your own catalog, so its price can be compared accurately instead of accidentally comparing two different items. Barcode/GTIN matching is one common method.
Promo / Sale Detection: Catching when a competitor starts or stops a sitewide promotion or discount banner, which can shift the effective price shoppers see even when the listed product price doesn't change.
Repricing Rule: A configured instruction for how automated pricing should react to competitor prices — e.g. "match the lowest competitor" or "stay 5% below the average" — always bounded by a floor price.
Reseller: A business that buys a brand's products and resells them, sometimes without the brand directly controlling the price they charge at checkout — which is exactly what MAP monitoring exists to catch.
Stock Monitoring: Tracking whether a competitor's product is in stock or sold out over time. A competitor stock-out is a window where a shopper who wanted that item may buy from you instead — if you notice it in time.