How a Convenience Chain Replaced One Price List with Four That Fit Its Markets
Use case Competitor prices, fuel & storeConvenience chain, 118 stores
How a convenience chain replaced one price list with four that fit its markets.
Store prices were set once and marked up by state. Cortex compared key store items and every pump with the competitors that matter, and built pricing zones from the chain’s own sales.
Cortex · connected to your business“Where are we priced out of line with local competitors?”
On 23 key items in 9 metro-edge stores, you’re 30 to 60 cents above the convenience store across the road. In 31 rural stores you’re 15 to 25 cents below everyone nearby.
The difference
Same question. Different results.
The question“Where are we priced out of line with local competitors?”
Claude / GPT / Public LLMs
Uploaded file
Answer
Your prices follow your policy: the home-market list plus 20¢ in other states. No issues found.
Just an answer.
Cortex AI
Connected intelligence
Cortex AI- Competitor shelf prices
- Competitor fuel prices
- Shared shoppers
- Basket data
- Price elasticity
- Store sales
- Demographics
- Road traffic
- Price tests
- Shelf label status
- +50¢ on soda in 9 stores
- Below every rival in 31 stores
- 4 zones, not 1 list
Answer
You’re out of line in both directions. 9 metro-edge stores are 30 to 60 cents above the store across the road. 31 rural stores are below everyone. Build four zones and test the price points.
A decision.
One price list, plus 20 cents, everywhere.
Store prices were set for the home market and marked up by a flat amount in the others. In some towns the chain was the most expensive store around. In others it left money on the table.
Fuel was priced site by site against nearby rivals, but nobody compared the store. Shelf tags were printed by hand, so changes were rare and often out of sync with the register.
Before Cortex
What the team saw first
- Store competitor pricesNever collected
- Enterprise pricingOne list, flat markup by state
- Shelf tagsOut of sync at 9 stores
- InstinctPrices are fine, volume is the issue
Then they kept asking
The follow-up questions, in the team’s own words.
“How should we group the stores?”
Into four zones built from your own sales and the competitors each store really faces: metro, metro-edge, highway and rural. Each gets its own margin rule.
“What should a 20 oz soda cost in the metro-edge zone?”
I tested $2.49, $2.59 and $2.69 for two weeks each. $2.59 sold almost as many as $2.49 and made the most profit.
What Cortex found
One item, four zones
Price test, metro-edge zone, two weeks each
$1,350 profit
$1,400 profit
$1,110 profit
“And fuel?”
Your fuel prices are in line. Two rivals follow your moves within 40 minutes, so cutting against them buys no volume.
Out of line in both directions.
Cortex collected competitor prices for 180 key store items and every nearby pump, scored each for reliability, and compared them with the chain’s own prices and sales by store.
The flat markup made metro-edge stores look expensive on the items shoppers notice most, while rural stores sat below every competitor nearby.
Four zones, one rule each, and shelves that keep up.
- Built four pricing zones, each with its own margin rule set from the base zone.
- Ran price tests on 12 high-volume items to find the best price point.
- Pushed every change to electronic shelf labels, so the shelf always matches the register.
What changed.
Competitive pricing doesn’t stop at the pump.
We watched every fuel price in town and never looked at the cooler. That’s where we were losing shoppers.
Shoppers compare a handful of items, not the whole store. Get those right in every market and the rest of the basket follows.
