Ghost WatchKey takeaways
- Hold it at the same time every week, with one owner and the people who can act: pricing, merchandising and marketing.
- Look at what moved, not everything: changes in your price position, new promotions, launches, stock-outs and AI shelf changes.
- End every item with a decision: respond, watch or ignore, with an owner and a date.
- Keep a running log of decisions, so you can see later which responses worked.
Competitor data is only useful if someone acts on it. The simplest way to make that happen is a short weekly meeting with a fixed agenda. Here’s one that takes 30 minutes.
Who should be there
- An owner, usually the head of e-commerce or trading, who runs the meeting and keeps the log.
- Pricing or merchandising, who can change prices and promotions.
- Marketing, who owns campaigns, product pages and the AI shelf.
Keep it small. Anyone else can read the decisions log.
Prepare the numbers before the meeting
Whoever prepares it, a person or a tool, should bring the same five things every week:
- Your price index this week and last week, overall and for your top product lines.
- The products where your price position changed most, especially best sellers that became the most expensive option.
- New competitor promotions, launches and stock-outs.
- Changes in your share of the AI shelf for your most important shopping questions.
- Last week’s decisions, and what happened since.
The agenda
| Minutes | Item | Question to answer |
|---|---|---|
| 0–5 | Last week’s decisions | Did what we did work? |
| 5–15 | Price moves | Which changes to our position need a response? |
| 15–22 | Promotions, launches and stock | Is anything coming we should plan for, or a gap we can fill? |
| 22–27 | The AI shelf | Did we gain or lose recommendations, and why? |
| 27–30 | Decisions | Who does what, by when? |
End every item with a decision
For each change you discuss, choose one of three outcomes:
- Respond: change a price, launch a promotion, update a product page. Name an owner and a date.
- Watch: it might matter; look again next week.
- Ignore: it doesn’t affect enough sales to be worth the effort.
“Ignore” is a perfectly good answer. Most competitor changes don’t need a response, and chasing all of them is how teams burn out. For price cuts specifically, see how to respond without starting a price war.
Keep a decisions log
A shared document with the date, the change, the decision, the owner and the result is enough. After a few months it becomes your most useful record: which competitor moves mattered, which responses paid off, and how competitors react to you.
Make it easier over time
The preparation is the part that usually slips. Automate it as soon as you can: a tool that collects prices, promotions and AI answers, and ranks the changes by their effect on your sales, turns the preparation into reading a one-page digest.
Terms in this guide
- Price index: Your prices compared with competitors’, as one number.
- Price position: Where you rank on price for a product: cheapest, middle or most expensive.
- Promotion calendar: A record of when competitors run sales, and what kind.
- Share of AI shelf: How often AI assistants recommend you for the questions that matter.