Here's a business case for how this could be useful and why I'm going to try it.
I operate a string of ~60 local businesses that have physical storefronts.
On average each store has 5 local competitors.
Our customers are VERY price sensitive - they will almost always call the "lowest price" guy in the area first.
As a result we currently have a duct-tape system to monitor competitor pricing and tweak ours as fast as possible.
MonitorBook would be a potentially much simpler mechanism to orchestrate this.
If the MB team is reading this drop me a line and we'd be a potentially great case study / early adopter.
Things that would have to work to make this usable long-term:
a) API so we could pull this data into our pricing algo.
b) Clear error-checking confidence - if a site we're monitoring changes their code / display and we miss it, we'd have to go back to duct-tape which is sloppy and labor intensive, but reliable.
You change your strategy :-) It's like Cryptonomicon "The most advanced technology, usually wins the war".
If they can do that, you'll have to figure out quickly and adapt... But to my personal experience, there are way more what if(s) flying around than what actually happens.
I operate a string of ~60 local businesses that have physical storefronts.
On average each store has 5 local competitors.
Our customers are VERY price sensitive - they will almost always call the "lowest price" guy in the area first.
As a result we currently have a duct-tape system to monitor competitor pricing and tweak ours as fast as possible.
MonitorBook would be a potentially much simpler mechanism to orchestrate this.
If the MB team is reading this drop me a line and we'd be a potentially great case study / early adopter.
Things that would have to work to make this usable long-term:
a) API so we could pull this data into our pricing algo.
b) Clear error-checking confidence - if a site we're monitoring changes their code / display and we miss it, we'd have to go back to duct-tape which is sloppy and labor intensive, but reliable.