AWARE Help & Support

Pricing information is, of course, one of the basic bits of information we all like to have about competitors' products. The only way to get 100% complete, up-to-date and accurate pricing is to call the competitor and buy the product. Practically however, this may not be possible or financially viable. You could also try to speak to a competitor sales rep. However, if any form of confidentiality agreement is involved, then you should not even consider breaking the rules that apply to it or asking others to do so.

There are, nevertheless, often alternative routes to get this information.

Assuming that customers of the competitor do not have to sign an NDA (which is much less common), then you may be able to get information from the competitor's customers. Or companies that failed to become customers - - perhaps your own customers? Other sources will be technology experts, trade journalists, and ex-employees of the competitor. So, think if you know anybody in the industry who used to work for the competitor and recently changed companies - perhaps even one of your own employees? (You can often find people who moved from the competitor by looking at the movers / new recruits section of industry and trade journals). Also check out all the trade journals for other mentions of your competitor (perhaps using an online search service such as Factiva). They will often include pricing when they do a report on new products or for company case studies (and even if they don't include the pricing, the journalist who wrote the news story may know the figures - so call him or her). You should also look at press-releases put out by your competitor's clients. Companies often mention about new installations and how much they spent in press releases - and you may find one mentioning your competitor.

Another potential sources will be trade shows. Does the competitor exhibit at any trade shows? If they do, visit their stand as sales people are often more open and less guarded when at an exhibition. If you seem like a genuine enquirer then you may be able to glean pricing information. (However be ethical. Do not misrepresent who you are, by for example, wearing a fake company name tag).

The worst case would be where even customers need to sign a confidentiality agreement, or each installation is completely customised and there is no set price at all (as this depends on each installation and is based on time, complexity and other factors). It appears that all routes to obtaining the information are blocked. In this case you may be able to piece together an estimate of the average price charged from a knowledge of the companies total sales turnover (easily obtained from company accounts in most of Europe) combined with a knowledge of the number of installations the company has made over the year. (This can be obtained through market research or a variety of other routes).

As a general rule, you should be able to get pricing information using legitimate and ethical routes. One of the top CI experts, Leonard Fuld, has said that "where money changes hands, so does information". Especially in the case of pricing this is true, as that is the whole point of setting a price.

It may take time and money to obtain however, and so you may need to convince management that obtaining this ethically rather than through subterfuge and searching the competitor's garbage for price lists is worthwhile. But that is part of the job of an ethical CI specialist rather than a proponent of industrial spying!