With travel season at its peak and Amazon’s Prime Day just behind us, now seems like the perfect time to blog about seasonality in competitive data. Back in June, QL2’s VP of Analytics, Joe Gagnon presented a webinar on summer travel demand and pricing. You should spend 40 minutes watching the webinar, but the summary is that our data shows that travel prices for this summer are going up.
This is not just a 2022 phenomenon. For our customers in the travel industry, Summer is always the peak season of the year for overall demand. Our customers have the challenge of maximizing profits while both prices and supply are changing rapidly. This is made even more challenging by the fact that for some products and destinations, purchases are made months or even years in advance as in the case of cruises or vacation packages. QL2’s most savvy customers are getting competitive updates several times per day and are tracking both price increases and decrease to maximize profits caused by this increased seasonal demand. They can obtain the information they need by modifying their search criteria for Destinations, Dates Shopped, and Length of Trip.
QL2’s retail customers have similar seasonality in their business. It is important for merchants at retailers to have an understanding of not only how their competitors are pricing their products, but what they have in inventory and where. As an example, sweaters are in great demand in November while bathing suits are in hot demand in May. Additionally, retailers have crucial periods where customers expect significant discounts to be offered, such as Prime Day and Black Friday. Our customers often use their marketing and advertising calendar as a guide on how to introduce seasonality in their data acquisition strategy.
Hopefully, I have given you something to think about as you make advanced plans for your use of competitive data. If you have any questions about how QL2 can help you implement a seasonal data acquisition strategy, please contact your QL2 account manager.
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Written by: Ben Greenwald, Sales Executive