Price star boundaries
The Price star boundaries endpoint provides you an indication of the price performance levels for your products which is essential for businesses. Its competitive pricing approach aims at selecting the price range for your products by evaluating the competitor’s pricing outside bol and the market trends thus enabling you to set your offer price in line with the competitor prices.
This endpoint of the Insights API provides you a list of all price star boundaries for a specific EAN enabling you to clearly analyze your product pricing at a glance through the price star scores. It enables you to evaluate the prices of your offers and strategically make adjustments to your product pricing.
This endpoint enriches the quality of your offers by not only supporting your assortment to rank higher in the search results but also increases your sale targets and helps maintaining your profit margins.
For more information on the endpoint, refer to the Redoc.
How can it help?
Price star boundaries endpoint involves a process of gathering and analyzing information about your competitors’ prices thereby offering you the following benefits:
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Offers price evaluation for your products at a glance based on detailed market analysis.
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Provides segregation of price boundaries for better clarity.
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Offers better exposure in Google Ads.
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Allows you to gauge the price perception of buyers by analysing their potential response to the increased or decreased product prices.
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Provides price elasticity that steadily offers improved profit margins and the sales.
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Provides premium customer shopping experience.
Relevant market price (RMP)
In order to successfully sell your products, it’s crucial to have an effective price for your products. Having too high prices can lead to lesser conversion rates and can influence the customer’s price perception towards your offer.
In order to determine whether an item is priced competitively, bol evaluates the relevant market price for each item. This process involves taking into account the prices from other relevant providers of the same item outside bol to ensure that prices at bol are at par with products in similar category in the market. Based on the market trends, the RMP is determined.
The RMP for each item is based on the following factors:
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Competitor price - Specifies the competitor’s price outside bol for similar product category.
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Recommended retail price - Specifies the retail price range at which the product should be sold.
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Historical platform price - Specifies the product price which is determined based on the following components:
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The price of an item in previous day’s buy block or the last known price.
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The most frequently used price of an item in the buy block in the last ninety days.
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| In case of absence of relevant providers for similar product category, recommended retail price (RRP) and the historical platform price are considered to calculate the effectiveness of the product price. |
Price star scores
bol assigns a price star score to your offer to help you determine the relevance of your product price. Price stars scores allow you to measure the effectiveness of your product prices. Based on the RMP, they provide you an indication if your product prices equate with market prices and persuade you to perform a price evaluation of your products.
This score ranges from 1-5 and is depicted through a number of stars that specify if your current product price is competitive.
An offer is assigned the price star scores based on the following:
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5 stars - If the product price is below or equal to boundary level 5.
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4 stars - If the product price is higher than the boundary level 5 and below or equal to the boundary level 4.
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3 stars - If the product price is higher than the boundary level 4 and below or equal to the boundary level 3.
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2 stars - If the product price is higher than the boundary level 3 and below or equal to the boundary level 2.
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1 star - If the product price is higher than the boundary level 2 (excluding the value).
| The price stars are not bound to one specific price range. Similar prices can have the same price star. |
For example, the price star scores of a product having the buy block price of 39.99 are mentioned in the table below:
| Price star(s) | Prices in Euro |
|---|---|
***** |
Lower than or equal to 39.94 |
Boundary level 5: boundary price = 39.94 |
|
**** |
Higher than 39.94 and lower than or equal to 40.00 |
Boundary level 4: boundary price = 40.00 |
|
*** |
Higher than 40.00 and lower than or equal to 44.00 |
Boundary level 3: boundary price = 44.00 |
|
** |
Higher than 44.00 and lower than or equal to 47.00 |
Boundary level 2: boundary price = 47.00 |
|
* |
Higher than 47.00 |
In the aforementioned example, since the buy block price of 39.99 is higher than 39.00 and lower than 40.00, this offer will have a price star score of 4 implying that it has a competitive price.
Price star boundaries
Price star boundaries serve as specific segmentation within the price star scores and is used to determine which specific category the price of your offer falls in. These boundaries are calculated based on the RMP for each item.
| On an average, the price star boundaries for a product are updated four times a day. |
Price stars are assigned to an offer based on the following:
| Price star(s) | Price quality interpretation |
|---|---|
5 stars (*****) |
Most Competitive Price - Specifies that your product is most competitively priced and your product is best priced relative to your main competitors. |
Boundary 5 |
|
4 stars (****) |
Competitive Price - Specifies that your product is competitively priced and your price is equal to the price of your main competitors. |
Boundary 4 |
|
3 stars (***) |
Slightly Above Market Price - Specifies that your product is priced according to the market however is slightly higher than that of your main competitors. |
Boundary 3 |
|
2 stars (**) |
Above Market Price - Specifies that your product is not in line with the market and your prices are a lot higher than your competitors. |
Boundary 2 |
|
1 star (*) |
Above Acceptable Price Point - Specifies that your product is poorly priced and has a considerable difference from the market price. |
| Offers with one star are not displayed on the webshop until the price is reduced. |
An example of the response from the Price star boundaries endpoint is given below:
{
{
"lastModifiedDateTime": "2022-04-25T14:51:21+02:00",
"priceStarBoundaryLevels": [
{
"level": 5,
"boundaryPrice": 39.94
},
{
"level": 4,
"boundaryPrice": 40
},
{
"level": 3,
"boundaryPrice": 44
},
{
"level": 2,
"boundaryPrice": 47
}
]
}
}
When the RMP of a product is based on the recommended retail price, the default value for boundary level 5 is 0.01. For a physical Dutch book, the default value for the boundary level 2 is 99999.
|
Insult prices
When the price of a product is above the boundary level 2, it is considered as an insult price. Insult prices specify that the product is highly priced and is above the acceptable price point. They indicate that the current price of the product is at a considerable difference from the similar products in the market. They stimulate you to evaluate your current product prices and define an effective pricing strategy.
Availability of price star boundaries
Price star boundaries are applicable to all offers in the Netherlands and Belgium that offer new products. Currently, price star boundaries are available for 60% of the bol assortment.
|
Price star boundaries are not available for:
|
Error Codes
The table below shows the currently available error codes from this endpoint and their interpretations:
| Error Code | Interpretation |
|---|---|
|
Specifies the reason for the validation error. For example, when the specified EAN is invalid. |
|
Specifies that no price star boundaries are available for the specified EAN. |
For more information on the errors, refer to the Redoc.