Monitor Online Resellers: How To Identify & Monitor authorised and unauthorised Online Resellers

Brands can monitor online resellers, secondary market grey dealers using web scraping tools on platforms like eBay, Amazon, Stock X, and others. Learn all there is to know about brand monitoring in th

By Admin @March, 8 2022

monitor online resellers: how to identify & monitor authorised and unauthorised online resellers

Monitor Online Resellers: How To Identify, Monitor authorised and unauthorised Online Resellers using web scraping

 

How Brands Can Monitor Online Resellers Using Web Scraping

Monitoring online resellers is a great way to keep an eye on market prices, understand the demand for your product and keep an eye for your brand reputation. However, most brands still do not know how to monitor online resellers, or how brand monitoring works.

If you are looking to start a new insights project to understand how other people are selling your brands products we will discuss everything there is to know about brand monitoring and how to monitor the secondary market. But first, let us begin with some basics.

What Are Online Resellers?

Online resellers, as the name suggests are dealing with those who obtain products directly from manufacturers and “resell” them to other consumers. It is a common mode of business where companies purchase bulk orders from manufacturers and sell them to third-party consumers at a slightly higher price.

It is a balanced approach as both the suppliers and the manufacturers can get a decent profit from it. However, there are various examples of when brands might not benefit from these online resellers hence why it is important to monitor how these sellers sell your products.

What are the types of Online Resellers?

Authorized

An authorized reseller is a person who has permission to sell products from manufacturers to the consumers directly. For example, franchised authorized reseller of products like Apple, AT&T, etc.

Unauthorized

Unauthorized sellers are the ones who do not have the license to sell products to consumers directly. However, they still choose to do this. As they are not licensed they have the ability to choose what price they sell these products at.

Consumers or Second-hand Resellers

Many times, consumers who purchase a product from a supplier can sell it again to a second-hand consumer. This is called the second reseller and is often the least profitable in most cases. However on some occasions when a consumer gets a heavy discount or buys a limited edition product, there is an opportunity to sell for a profit.

Why Monitor Online Resellers?

Monitoring online resellers is becoming a growing trend because of the rise in online ecommerce. To help you understand this concept better, let’s take a quick glance at some reasons why monitoring online resellers can help brands.

Protect Trademarks

Trademarks are a huge concern for manufacturers considering online resellers can sell duplicate, poor quality, or counterfeit products. Keeping an eye on online sellers help keep an eye on possible sales issues.

Identify Authorized Resellers Selling Below MAP

MAP (Minimum Advertising Price) is a standard recommended retail price that manufacturers recommends that each licensed retailer should sell their products at. Any resellers supplying products for amounts lower than the MAP are damaging the business. Fortunately, monitoring online resellers allows you to keep identify any reseller breaking the rules.

Identify Unauthorized Resellers

Unauthorized sellers take away a huge portion of a company’s profits, despite not having a selling license. However, manufacturers that Monitor secondary markets can identify these unauthorized resellers and stop them for a better market response.

Monitor Demand/Price

Monitoring resellers also helps businesses determine what they should, or should not do with their product prices in the future. It is safe to set a good demand-price ratio and earn suitable profits without overburdening the consumers in the market.

 

What Are the Online Channels to Monitor Online Resellers?

Knowing the right online channels to find online resellers is key to be able to monitor their activities. The below are some of the best channels to monitor online resellers.

  • Amazon: The world biggest online retailer and marketplace; with over 2million active sellers, this is the most popular source for finding authorised online resellers
  • Gumtree: Available in the UK, South Africa and Australia. Gumtree is one of the largest classified ads listings website. This is a good place to find second-hand online resellers
  •  eBay: Largest consumer to consumer marketplace globally. A great place to find unauthorised and second-hand online resellers
  •  Stock X: Most popular marketplace for limited edition consumer products like sneakers, trading card and designer handbags

Each of these platforms has its specific characteristics, millions of customers from multiple countries. You will probably find a plethora of online resellers interacting with customers, and supplying your products for a lower price. It will also help you make precise estimations of the possible prices you should keep, and the market demand for each product.

Understanding these platforms provides manufacturers with sufficient data for analysis. However, this may take some time. It is because there are multiple methods for monitoring reseller channels. Interestingly, none of these options are as good and effective as automation via web scraping.

How Do I Monitor These Online Channels for resellers?

Knowing the best practices for monitoring online resellers is the key to keeping your business afloat. The basic principle is skimming through numerous online websites, reading their data, and collecting relevant information.

While of this is possible manually, it is not a good approach when doing on a large scale volume. Fortunately, there is a solution for this, for instance, web automation scraping solutions.

What Is Web Scraping?

Web automation scraping refers to the process of extracting online information in a structured manner automatically. It includes programs that surf the internet on behalf of other data collectors. It is a fast and reliable method of collecting information and keeping it streamlined for analysis and application. Web scraping is a great tool for monitoring online resellers because it skims through numerous sites simultaneously, looks for relevant results automatically

webautomation.io Pre-defined web scrapers

Typically building a web scraper requires deep knowledge of programming languages like python or Node.js. Luckily we at webautomation.io have made web scraping easy and available to all user without needing to build or write any code. . In one click you could start running an extractor to get the data you need to monitor online resellers from any of the channels we mentioned.

Below are some ready made web scraper that can be used instantly to get the data needed to monitor online resellers

Now Let us discuss what industries should incorporate web scraping with their products.

Which Industries Need to Monitor online resellers?

Although almost every industry needs to keep an eye on their competitors, online resellers, and the secondary market. However, it could become expensive especially if there isn't a big problem or ROI on the projects. The below are the industries which have the biggest problems that require active monitoring

  1.  Sneakers Brands; especially brands that do limited edition shoes. According to Imperva’s 2020 Bad Bot report over 18% of traffic to ecommerce sites comes from bad bots trying to buy these products to resell on the grey market
  2.  Luxury Watches; For certain brands that have watches with long wait lists. It is essential to monitor who are reselling the limited watches on the grey markets
  3. Luxury Goods: Luxury goods like designer bags are notorious for having counterfeit resellers, if not monitored the brand reputation could be damaged
  4. Consumer Electronics: video games, gadgets and other hi-tech electronics

If you are in any of these industries it is imperative that you have a web scraping strategy to monitor multiple online channels to provide insights to make decisions

Bottom Line

Choosing the right web scraping tool is the easiest way to keep an eye on online resellers, users looking for solutions to monitor the secondary and grey market, and much more. However, we suggest using the best web scraping tool you can find for the task. A good option is webautomation.iol. It has a simple solution to monitor products, collect data, and much more.

Try Web automation for free today!

Let us assist you with your web extraction needs. Get started for FREE

* indicates required
someone@example.com

Are you ready to start getting your data?

Your data is waiting….

About The Author

wa
Developer

here we have description