For our latest article, our experts analyzed retail price data as well as product information from the Health & Beauty category on Google Shopping, during the month of February 2021. Using our Price Intelligence Solution, we collected highly competitive keywords. We found more than 3,000 unique product SKUs from approximately 650 brands, sold by nearly 4,000 sellers. There were more than 35,000 price changes on these products throughout the month.
We looked at which retailers were making the greatest number of price changes and which were providing the most options, in terms of Health and Beauty products. We also investigated the data to see what days retailers/brands were lowering their prices vs raising them. Another aspect we examined was which retailers typically had lower prices than their competitors in this category throughout the month.
Top Retailers
We discovered that eBay had the most product SKUs, followed by Walmart. If you are a retailer in this category, these two stores appear to be big competitors. While having more SKUs gives the customers more options, it also means there is more competition among the manufacturer/brands of these products, in addition to more competition.
Looking at the price change data, Walmart seems to have a more aggressive dynamic pricing strategy than eBay, since they had fewer SKUs, but more price changes. Retailers like ModeSens, Ulta Beauty, and Sephora, who are in the top five in terms of SKU count, accounted for under 1% of the overall price changes. Meaning that during the month of February, they did not have many price changes on their products.
Top Brands
Per our data, MAC was the top brand with the greatest number of products (with 115). They were also the most competitive brand, as they recorded 6% of price changes in the category during the month. The only other brand to make the top five in SKU count as well as price changes was DevaCurl. DevaCurl had one of the most aggressive pricing strategies, as they had almost 3% of price changes on just 28 SKUs. Meaning that each of their product’s prices was updated 30 times during the month.
Most Competitive Price Range
From our analysis, we found 80% of price changes to be in the $0-$50 price range. This range also had the most distinct SKUs, with 1,513. The most competitive price range was between $0-$50, with 80% of price changes occurring on 74% of SKUs. The least competitive price range was the $50-$100 range, which had 13% of products, but only 12% of the total price changes. The price range between $200-$500 had very few products, as well as price changes. These price ranges (from $200-$300) show us that there isn’t much competition here, but also that there may not be much consumer demand.
Top Retailers by Lowest Priced SKUs
Our data showed that eBay provided the best deals for products in the ‘Health & Beauty’ category during the month, with the lowest priced SKUs, in comparison to other retailers in the market. eBay had the lowest prices on 44% of products during this month. Meaning that at some point during the month, eBay had the lowest price on 44% of the products. Therefore, customers shopping here would have been more likely to find the best deals for health and beauty products. Walmart was a distant second, having the lowest price on 15% of the products.
Most Competitive Day of the Week
We found Friday as the best day of the week, as prices were lowered at a higher rate, compared to other the other days of the week. Prices were lowered 60% of the time and raised 40% of the time, which provided the chance to find products at a lower price. Tuesday was found to be the day when prices were raised more often than being lowered.
Top Products Carried by Most Sellers
Below are the top 5 products for the category ‘Health & Beauty’, carried by the most number of sellers, based on our price intelligence data.
