Competitive monitoring and pricing strategy have their own vocabulary, often borrowed from technical jargon. This glossary gathers the 20 most useful terms for an online seller starting out with price monitoring — explained simply, without unnecessary jargon.
The basic terms
Competitive intelligence: the process of continuously collecting and analyzing information about competitors (prices, stock, new products) to adjust your own strategy.
Repricing: the automatic or semi-automatic adjustment of your selling prices based on market signals (competitor prices, stock, demand).
Scraping: an automated technique for collecting data from web pages (here, the prices shown on competitor sites).
Markup rate: margin divided by purchase cost. Expresses the return on the product investment.
Margin rate: margin divided by selling price. Expresses the share of the selling price that remains after all costs.
Price elasticity: a measure of how sensitive demand is to a price change. The more elastic a product, the more a price drop generates extra sales (and vice versa for an increase).
Amazon-specific terms
Buy Box: the "Add to Cart" box on an Amazon product page, awarded by the algorithm to a single seller (or in rotation). It concentrates the vast majority of sales on the ASIN in question.
ASIN: Amazon Standard Identification Number, the unique identifier for a product on Amazon.
FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon): a selling method where Amazon handles storage, packing and shipping for the seller. Favored by the Buy Box algorithm.
FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant): a selling method where the seller handles logistics themselves.
ODR (Order Defect Rate): the rate of defective orders. Must stay under 1% to avoid being penalized on the Buy Box.
Price walking: a technique of gradually raising your price in small increments as long as you keep the Buy Box, to maximize your margin.
Control and distribution terms
MAP (Minimum Advertised Price): the minimum price below which a brand contractually forbids its resellers from advertising the product. Monitored to protect brand image and the distribution network's margins.
MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price): the retail price recommended by the manufacturer, for guidance only (unlike MAP, which is contractual).
Price gap: the difference, in value or percentage, between your price and a competitor's on a comparable product.
Strategy and data terms
JSON-LD: a structured data format used by many e-commerce sites to describe a product (price, availability, brand) in a machine-readable way — including for monitoring tools and search engines.
Alert threshold: a pre-defined condition that triggers a notification (e.g. "alert if a competitor drops more than 5%").
Price history: a record of a product's price changes over time, useful for telling a one-off promotion apart from a lasting trend.
Price floor: the absolute minimum price below which you refuse to sell, calculated from purchase cost, fees and the minimum acceptable margin.
Price positioning: an overall strategy defining whether you position yourself as the cheapest in the market, mid-range, or premium — independent of one-off competitor fluctuations.
Actionable report: as opposed to a simple data table, a report that formulates concrete, prioritized recommendations ("lower this product by 3%", not just "this product dropped 3% at the competitor").
In summary
Mastering this vocabulary isn't an academic exercise — it's what lets you read a competitive monitoring report, understand a tool's recommendations, and make informed pricing decisions rather than intuitive ones. Keep this glossary handy the next time a term escapes you.