Competitor analysis has always been part of the daily routine for FMCG suppliers, but the rise of online stores has significantly changed the rules of the game. The major grocery retail chains publish their product information, prices, and promotions openly online, which means that public e-commerce data has become one of the most important raw materials for competitor analysis. The question is not whether information is available, but how to collect and interpret it correctly.
It is important to understand what this data actually means. Online store product listings, prices, and promotional offers reflect the in-store situation: when a product appears in Kesko’s or S-Group’s online store at a certain price or in a promotion, it reveals how the product is displayed and priced in physical stores. That is why e-commerce data analysis is of particular interest to FMCG suppliers who want to understand the competitive landscape on the retail shelf, not just in digital channels.
What information can be found in public e-commerce sources
Publicly available e-commerce data covers several practical data points. The online stores of retail chains and individual stores provide visibility into product listings, prices, promotions, and often availability information as well. For some chains, stock levels are also included. This information is in principle available to everyone, but systematic daily monitoring requires considerably more than occasional browsing.
In practice, public e-commerce data can be used to extract, for example, a competing product’s regular price, average price, promotional price, price changes, and the timing of promotions, as well as the product’s coverage across different chains and every individual store. This information alone already reveals a great deal, but its true value only emerges when data is collected consistently over a sufficiently long period of time.
Pricing and promotion monitoring as a source of competitive advantage
Tracking pricing information is one of the most straightforward ways to leverage public e-commerce data for competitor monitoring. Knowing when a competitor is running a promotion and at what price makes it possible to assess their commercial strategy by chain and by time period.
Promotion monitoring often reveals more than just the price. It can show how frequently a competitor runs promotions in a given chain, how deep the price reduction is, and what the promotion frequency looks like compared to your own activity. This information is particularly valuable for annual commercial planning and chain negotiations. If a competitor runs promotions in Citymarket every other month while your own promotion frequency is quarterly, that is a strategic observation worth taking into account.
Daily monitoring is key here. Occasional spot checks can give a misleading picture, as promotions can be short-lived or staggered by chain. Systematic market intelligence requires that data is collected every day without gaps. The key advantages of e-commerce data in competitor monitoring are speed and cost-efficiency.
Assortment changes reveal more than meets the eye
A product appearing in or disappearing from an online store’s assortment is a signal that is easy to miss without systematic monitoring. Yet assortment changes are one of the most significant sources of competitor intelligence for an FMCG supplier.
In Finnish grocery retail, store coverage is determined primarily by chains’ assortment decisions and assortment periods. When a competitor gets their product into a chain’s assortment, it shows up in e-commerce data as a change in store coverage across all of that chain’s stores. This is a strategically interesting observation: the entry of a new competing product into a chain’s assortment can affect your own shelf space or promotional opportunities.
Assortment data is also worth monitoring for your own products. If your own product disappears from an online store’s assortment, it is often the first sign of a potential out-of-stock situation or an assortment decision that you can respond to quickly.
How POS and delivery data complement the e-commerce view
Public e-commerce data tells you a great deal about what is happening in the market, but it does not tell you what is actually being sold in stores. For that, you need FMCG sales data, particularly POS data collected from point-of-sale systems as well as delivery data from chains.
POS data reveals actual sales at the store level, which is an entirely different matter from the price or store coverage visible in an online store. Delivery data, in turn, shows how much product has been delivered to a chain. Combined with POS data, it enables an assessment of stock levels at the store level. This combination is critical for identifying out-of-stock situations, for example: if deliveries have been made but sales have stalled, the problem may be on the shelf, not in demand.
FieldForce’s eForce Market Data Service combines POS and delivery data into a single unified view, making this analysis a practical and continuous process for FMCG suppliers. Combining e-commerce data with sales data provides a considerably more accurate picture of the market situation than either source alone. Public e-commerce data works best in exactly this kind of role: it complements and enriches internal data rather than replacing it.
Competitive advantage is not built from individual data sources, but from the ability to combine multiple sources of information and interpret them correctly. For an FMCG supplier that wants to stay one step ahead, systematic e-commerce data monitoring combined with store-level sales data is one of the most effective ways to build genuine market understanding.