Product Competition Analysis in E-marketplaces: a case study

Abstract

Over the last years, the amount of retailers that uses e-marketplaces as a channel of distribution have increased more and more. However, competition in e-marketplaces is fierce and finding products that are profitable in a concrete e-marketplace can be really difficult. This competition can be an issue for retailers who buy products from the suppliers without taking into account the competitors in the e-marketplace in which they are trying to sell it. The solution for retailers will be to use a software which can rank the products(that can be bought from the suppliers) according to the competition in the e-marketplace. For this reason, this thesis tries to embrace the analysis of product competition to ease the process of buying and replenishing products from the suppliers. In this thesis, a case study about the competition of a certain brand (De- sigual Clothes) in a concrete e-marketplace (CDiscount.com marketplace) is performed. The main aim in this thesis is to design and develop an approach to rank ”Desigual” products depending on their competition on CDiscount market- place. Therefore, it is needed a model to determine how high is a competititon of a certain product and a way to order all this products from the less competitive to the most and so, obtaining a ranking of the competition for a set of products. For the analysis of product competition a software application have been designed and developed. These software acomplishes several objectives: Data Gathering is a key part in the process of analysing the product competition on cdiscount electronic marketplace. Product Competition Modeling. Based on inputs such as quantity, price, shipping cost and disounts create a model which can determine the level of competition compared with the other products analysed Data analysis. Analysing whether the results from the algorithm are the ones expected or not.