Keeping up with competition prices

[zosim]

I'm currently updating my inventory. So far, I am about to list almost 9000 items for sale. It's been a very huge effort, specially with updating prices. One of the things I need to consider, to stay competitive, is to know how much others are selling it, so I can determine which items could I really sell.

Problem is, if I have so much inventory, it will take forever to do the research. I could go to epinions.com, mysimon, and pricegrabber to get the lowest prices, but it's so much manual work. Is there a tool, or some code I can put on my site that can crawl and grab the lowest price being listed on such sites? Basically go through each item, say via model number, then query the web for the lowest price, then go to the next item, and so on.

Thanks for any help.

[ScottM]

A few months ago we raised our prices. We stopped getting sales for about 3 weeks and then the sales came right back to where they were before, but with a greater margin now.

Often, you don't need the lowest price, you just need to increase the 'perceived value'.

Consider this formula:

Perceived Value - Price = Value

If you raise the price, the value goes down to the customer. You then have two options:

Lower the price OR raise perceived value. We chose the latter and it worked.

Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the perceived value increases along with the higher price for no other reason than the price itself.

Remember the scene in 'Pulp Fiction' with John Travolta and the female (I've forgotten her name), but she ordered a $5 milkshake?

John was not impressed with the price, in fact he was incredulous. BUT- and here is the kicker- he WANTED to TASTE it. (The higher price prompted desire.) There was something mysterious about a $5 milkshake...and he was impressed when he tasted it. His perceived value went higher than the price went up and so he thought it was a D*** good milkshake.