Turning market monitoring into a system

In many companies, market monitoring still lives in a manually updated Excel file. Prices and promotions go in whenever someone gets to it. A new pack or an important piece of trade activity may be tracked somewhere else entirely. The file tends to get proper attention once sales slow down or another commercial problem puts the market back on the agenda.

That gives the business a record of what has already happened. The more useful question is whether an important change can be seen early enough to be assessed before it shows up in the commercial result.

This article covers market information that can be collected lawfully from public sources and used by a company for its own independent commercial decisions. Pricing and commercial practices of dominant undertakings may require separate assessment under competition law.

What happens in the market is one input into a commercial decision. The company’s own economics and the position it wants the brand to hold still shape the answer. Supply can change it entirely: if a product already cannot meet demand, a lower price elsewhere in the market gives the company no reason to move its own.

In brief

• Market monitoring covers more than prices. A change in promotion intensity, a new pack format or a shift in channel activity can all signal that something in the category is moving.
• McKinsey’s December 2024 RGM analysis treats pricing, promotions, assortment and trade investment as the core levers and argues for using them together, as price-led growth becomes harder to sustain (McKinsey).
• NIQ’s 2025 APAC analysis estimates a $4.45 billion opportunity from reducing promotional inefficiency across APAC modern trade, and reports that 15 percent of sales come from overpromoted items. These are regional figures rather than global benchmarks (NIQ).
• Most market movements do not call for a response. The point of monitoring is to surface the ones that deserve a commercial discussion.

Why does a manually updated process arrive late?

Buying a monitoring tool does not make the process proactive. A larger Excel file does not solve it either. Collecting the information is usually the easier part.

The harder part is agreeing what deserves attention before the result forces the discussion.

When the file is opened only after sales weaken, the analysis can still explain what happened. The team simply has fewer options left by then.

Review frequency depends on the category. A product whose price and promotions move constantly needs a different level of attention from a stable part of the portfolio. Watching every SKU continuously adds work without improving the decision.

A better starting point is deciding which market changes are worth reviewing on a regular schedule.

What should market monitoring actually cover?

Price is the obvious place to start, and it is only part of the picture.

A change in promotion frequency can matter even when the shelf price has not moved. If a brand that rarely promoted starts appearing on deal every other week, something in the category is shifting well before an annual price list shows it.

New packs send another kind of signal. A smaller format entering at a lower price point, or a large value pack growing in one channel, can change how shoppers read the whole category.

Channel activity belongs in the same view. A product moving into discounters or expanding quickly through a new route to market can change the competitive context with no movement in its headline price.

McKinsey’s December 2024 RGM analysis makes a broader version of the same point. It describes pricing, promotions, assortment and trade investment as the main RGM levers and argues that CPG companies need to use them in a more integrated way now that price-led growth is harder to sustain.

NIQ’s 2025 APAC work gives a more concrete promotional example. It estimates a $4.45 billion opportunity from reducing promotional inefficiency across APAC modern trade, and reports that 15 percent of sales come from overpromoted items while some promotion-sensitive products get too little support. The figures are regional, but the underlying point travels: promotion intensity is market information worth monitoring.

How should market prices be evaluated?

Two prices sitting close to each other does not make the products comparable.

A temporary promotion changes what the shopper actually pays. Pack size can move the comparison somewhere else entirely. Channel conditions ignored in the calculation make similar looking numbers misleading.

Brand strength and perceived value affect how a price is read. Two products at almost the same price can occupy very different places in the shopper’s mind.

Private label belongs in the comparison where it is genuinely part of the set. It should not be treated as equivalent to the nearest branded SKU by default; its role within the wider price-pack architecture is what matters.

The aim is not a single perfect comparison price. It is understanding which price relationships are commercially meaningful. A dashboard built on poor comparisons still gives the wrong picture, however clean it looks.

When does a market change deserve a closer look?

A single promotion may say nothing about strategy. A new pack in one account may be a local test.

The change becomes interesting once it persists, or once it starts appearing across more of the market.

At that point the team needs to understand what sits behind it before changing anything internally. Another company can be working with a different cost position, different margin expectations or a different supply situation.

Price is a useful example of why that matters.

McKinsey described a CPG case where a company moved its price to a competitor’s level on a large contract with a leading food retailer. A severe price war followed and almost all industry profitability in that category was destroyed.

Rao, Bergen and Davis reached a related conclusion in their Harvard Business Review analysis of price wars. Their argument was that understanding how the conflict started should come before a retaliatory cut.

Both are historical illustrations rather than current benchmarks. They are useful because they show the risk of reading an observed market move as an instruction.

The company’s own economics still set the boundary. Where supply is already constrained, cutting price gives away margin without creating volume.

The same logic applies outside pricing. More promotional activity in the market does not mean the right answer is more promotion, and a new pack appearing elsewhere does not mean every brand needs one.

The job of monitoring is to bring the change into the commercial discussion while there is still time to weigh it.

What is the difference between manual monitoring and a market monitoring system?

Dimension	Manually updated monitoring	Market monitoring system
Scope	Usually visible price changes	Pricing, promotions, pack changes and relevant channel activity
Update	Refreshed when a question comes up	Reviewed according to how quickly the category moves
Comparison	Individual observations	Context and change over time
Output	An updated file	A change that deserves commercial review
Decision	Reviewed after performance has moved	Assessed early against the company’s own objectives and economics
Boundaries	Outside the process	Company profitability and pricing thresholds inside the review

The decision row is the one that matters most.

More frequent information adds little when nobody has agreed what deserves attention. A single observation is rarely enough either. The useful signal is usually a change that continues, or one that turns up in more than one part of the market.

Does monitoring need to be real time?

Usually not.

The right frequency follows how quickly the category moves and how much time the business needs to respond.

A heavily promotional category may need frequent review. A stable portfolio will not.

The aim is to see a meaningful change while the business can still act on it. Real-time monitoring earns its cost only where the decision itself runs at that speed.

Conclusion

A market monitoring process that works brings an important change in front of the commercial team before it has worked its way through the company’s own results.

Sometimes that signal is price. At another point it may be promotion intensity, or a different pack architecture entering the category.

The company still makes its own decision. The value is in getting the right market change into that discussion early enough.

How does GDP build it?

We start by deciding which market changes could genuinely affect a commercial decision.

For one category that means a small set of important price relationships. For another, promotional activity or new pack introductions carry more weight.

We then define the comparison logic and how often the information needs to be reviewed. The aim is to avoid filling another dashboard with market data nobody uses.

Where pricing is part of the process, the company’s own profitability and pricing thresholds stay inside the decision. A movement in the market does not override those boundaries automatically.

We build this through our Commercial Intelligence work, alongside pricing, promotion effectiveness and price-pack architecture. The sell-out side of the same logic is covered in Sell-out is not a historical report; it is a commercial alarm system.

Frequently asked questions

Is market monitoring only about prices?

No. Promotion intensity can be an important signal even when prices have not moved. New pack formats and significant channel activity also change the commercial context. What deserves monitoring depends on the category and on the decisions the company needs to make.

How often should the market be reviewed?

No single frequency works for every product. A heavily promotional category needs more frequent review than a stable part of the portfolio. What matters is that the information reaches the commercial decision in time to be used.

How should market prices be compared?

Shelf price alone is rarely enough. Promotion mechanics and pack size can change the comparison materially. Channel context and the role of the product matter as well. Private label is included where relevant, but assessed within the wider price-pack architecture rather than treated as equivalent to a branded product by default.

Does knowing market prices tell a company what its own price should be?

No. Market prices provide context. The company’s own cost and margin structure remain central, as does the position it wants the brand to hold. Supply and demand conditions can point to a different answer again.

Does every market movement require action?

No. Many changes are temporary or too small to matter commercially. Monitoring should help the team separate normal market activity from a change that deserves assessment.

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Sources

Current RGM context: McKinsey, “Harnessing revenue growth management for sustainable success,” December 2024. Pricing, promotions, assortment and trade investment are treated as the core RGM levers, with a case for a more integrated approach after a period of price-led growth.

Regional pricing and promotion evidence: NielsenIQ, “Smarter Pricing Strategy in APAC for Uncertain Market Conditions,” 2025. The $4.45 billion promotional inefficiency estimate and the 15 percent overpromoted sales figure relate to APAC modern trade and are not global benchmarks.

Historical pricing example: McKinsey, “Setting value, not price.” The CPG price-war case is used as a historical illustration rather than a current benchmark.

Historical publication: Akshay R. Rao, Mark E. Bergen and Scott Davis, “How to Fight a Price War,” Harvard Business Review, March–April 2000.

Note: this article deliberately avoids performance claims about real-time pricing tools, such as response times or margin improvement percentages. Those figures usually come from e-commerce marketplace settings and do not transfer directly to FMCG manufacturers and distributors.

Last reviewed: August 2026.

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