Dynamic Pricing: The best Black Friday pricing strategy live in action (Price Study 2022)

Smartphones are amongst one of the most searched categories of electronic products during the Black Friday sales season. This growing demand explains the different price changes that online sellers decide to set throughout this highly competitive environment.

As the price evolution below is dynamic and changes every hour, we can only provide some first observations of the results for each smartphone.

Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE Smartphone 128GB

In Q2 2022 Xiaomi was the smartphone company ranking third on most shipments around the world. This middle-range Xiaomi model is priced online between 417 € and 229 € in Germany (retrieved on 11/15/2022). The cheapest price can be found on saturn.de, which nowadays is an Electronics marketplace, like mediamarkt.de, whereas the retailer mercateo.de offers the highest price for the same item. Overall, two of the three marketplaces where this product was detected (saturn.de and amazon.de) offer the top cheapest prices. However, according to data, otto.de can be considered the most expensive online platform to buy this Xiaomi model.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, 5G 512GB

Samsung is considered one of the top smartphone brands worldwide and last quarter shipped over 62.5 million smartphone units. Followed by the iPhone brand, both smartphone companies make up over a third of the entire market share. 

The Samsung Galaxy z Fold 3 is an innovative phone and the first of the Galaxy family to fold and be compatible with an S pen. According to the pricing data below, its prices oscillate between 757 € and 2,076 €. These significant price differences (on cw-mobile.de it is almost three times as expensive as on auspreiser) show how the price image of the product can be damaged. The cheapest price of this smartphone can be found on the price comparison website auspreiser.de, which in most cases has cheaper prices than the rest due to its second-hand options, which are always cheaper than the new products by default. The second cheapest website is bestcheck.de which is used to compare prices for buyers as well. In contrast, the e-tailer cw-mobile sells the most expensive smartphone. Here as well otto.de is amongst the most expensive online platforms.

Although global tablet sales are dropping in recent years, tablets have also played a key role in past Black Friday events. As you will see in the graph below, when compared with the smartphone price data, the two selected tablets have experienced more price changes than the smartphones for the same period of time.

Microsoft Surface Pro 7 – 8GB / 256GB

Microsoft launched this tablet model in 2019 which can be considered a high-range product with prices oscillating between 577 € and 1,349 €.

Amazon has demonstrated so far the highest amount of price changes (retrieved on 11/15/2022), although not the overall cheapest price as users might expect from this retail giant. Similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 phone, the comparative website auspreiser.de guarantees the cheapest price with second-hand options for users. Nonetheless, Amazon still ranks first for the cheapest new item. On the contrary, the retailer expert.de offers the most expensive tablet units for almost double the price as on the Amazon marketplace.

Apple iPad Air (2022) 64GB 

In 2021, according to a worldwide survey in cooperation with Semrush, “iPad” was the seventh most searched product for Black Friday. Unsurprisingly this year the latest iPad Air model is considered one of the top early Black Friday tablet deals. Freshly released in March, this iPad can be bought online between 459 € and 825 €. 

The cheapest price was detected on bestcheck.de at the beginning of November and the most expensive one on yakodo.de. Overall, marketplaces show a tendency for cheaper prices than retailers.

The present price study demonstrates how any retailer and brand can have a clear and updated overview of their competition on all kinds of marketplaces, price comparison websites, and retailers. The rise of marketplaces is changing the way businesses set their prices, and as seen so far at the beginning of November, they have shown to offer the most competitive prices.

What does this mean for you and your business?

If you are working for a company that sells its products online in a highly competitive environment, then the use of a price monitoring solution should be part of your Black Friday pricing strategy. By monitoring your competition in real-time you will always be a step ahead of your competitors, especially during such a relevant sales period as Black Friday.