This guide is designed for both new and experienced users. Whether you're adopting Price Optimization for the first time or looking to expand its impact, you'll find strategies, best practices, and persona-specific tips to help you unlock more value at every stage of the journey.
If you’re using Wiser’s Price Optimization solution, you’ve already made a smart move to scale pricing strategies, respond faster to market changes, and align your prices to your business goals. But are you getting the most from it?
Pricing is complex. Managing thousands of SKUs, reacting to competitor moves, maintaining brand positioning, and protecting margins—it’s a lot. But with the right strategy and tools, it’s possible to move from reactive changes to proactive, scalable pricing success.
That’s what Price Optimization is built for.
This playbook is designed to help you uncover more value from the product you already have. No matter where you are in your journey, the guidance within helps you sharpen your approach and increase the impact of Price Optimization.
Targeted Segmentation:
Focus Pricing Where It Matters Most
Each business handles pricing a little differently. The most effective strategies prioritize high-impact SKUs and align pricing logic to specific business goals. Targeted segmentation allows you to group products based on meaningful criteria so you can apply tailored pricing rules and maximize returns.
Here’s how to maximize the value:
Prioritize high-impact SKUs that influence revenue, profitability, or volume.
Group by foundational attributes like brand and category. Add margin contribution if available to target profit-driving products, and consider seasonality to support timely pricing decisions.
Segment based on competition, such as # of competitors or price gap.
Use custom attributes to flag products for seasonal or strategic treatment.
How to Increase Your Impact Over Time
Crawl | Apply basic filters to segment SKUs by category or brand. Focus pricing strategies on high-volume products. |
Walk | Build multi-attribute segments based on product attributes such as margin contribution, seasonality, or competitor presence. Begin refining strategy targets with more specific filters. |
Run | Continuously optimize segments using historical sales data and competitive trends. Automate rule assignment based on segment triggers. |
Use Case Highlight: 
Read the full case study here.
Strategic Pricing Execution:
Align Tactics to Business Goals
Once segments are in place, it’s time to define how pricing strategies execute. Tactical pricing adjustments ensure every price change is intentional, aligned to business rules, and responsive to the market.
Here’s how to maximize the value:
Use calculations to provide flexibility in strategy development by incorporating data that may not live within Price Optimization (e.g., cost, margin targets, external benchmarks). This helps tailor pricing logic to your business goals.
Set price bounds to protect against unintentional extremes.
Apply rounding rules for clean, consistent pricing presentation.
Use Live Preview and Simulation to validate strategies before they go live.
How to Increase Your Impact Over Time
Crawl | Build simple rules using cost and competitor price. Set price floors and ceilings. Use Live Preview to validate changes. |
Walk | Layer in margin targets, historical sales, rounding rules, and simulations to preview complex strategies. Begin refining rules based on pricing outcomes. |
Run | Operationalize continuous improvement. Use Inspector and strategy performance feedback to adjust rules at scale. Align logic with evolving business goals, campaigns, and market dynamics. |
Use Case Highlight: Automating Regional Pricing
Automation & Prioritization:
Scale Pricing with Confidence
Manual pricing changes don’t scale. With automation, pricing teams can focus on strategy—not execution. Prioritization ensures rules run in the right order, and scheduling triggers changes when they matter most—even after hours. The system runs 24/7 so you don’t have to.
Here’s how to maximize the value:
Automate strategy execution with date/time scheduler.
Organize strategy list to run critical rules first (e.g., promotions).
Use a ‘Catch-All’ strategy to ensure full SKU coverage.
Run Simulation when changing strategy priority.
How to Increase Your Impact Over Time
Crawl | Start by automating a small batch of SKUs or a single promotion. Use simple schedules and a basic priority list to build confidence and validate results. |
Walk | Expand scheduling to cover more business scenarios. Refine prioritization to ensure seasonal, promotional, and evergreen rules execute in the right order. |
Run | Automate pricing at scale with advanced scheduling. Use multiple strategy schedules across categories or campaigns, and monitor interactions using Simulation and Inspector to optimize performance. |
Use Case Highlight: 
Read the full case study here.
Common Pricing Strategies in Action
There’s no single right way to set up your strategies—but many teams build around a familiar set of pricing goals. Below are examples of common strategies you might configure in Price Optimization, along with guidance for adapting them to your business context. These aren’t step-by-step instructions—they’re starting points for discussion and experimentation based on your team’s structure, product catalog, and business goals.
Markdown Pricing
Apply reductions to SKUs that are end-of-life, seasonal, or underperforming. You might reduce prices by a fixed percent or dollar amount within margin limits.
Considerations: Which SKUs should markdown rules apply to? When should they run?
Keep Current Price
Assign this rule to SKUs that shouldn’t be impacted by active pricing changes—for example, regulated items or those with fixed agreements.
Considerations: When should this be used as a fallback vs. a deliberate strategy?
Match Lowest Competitor
Set prices to align with the lowest market price for a given SKU. Often used for highly competitive or commoditized items.
Considerations: Do you need price floors to protect margin? Should this apply to all competitors or just select ones?
Maintain Margin
Ensure that pricing adjustments don’t bring your margin below an acceptable threshold, factoring in cost data when available.
Considerations: Are you using dynamic cost data? What level of margin variability is acceptable?
Promotional Pricing
Temporary price reductions tied to holidays, marketing events, or brand campaigns. Run on a schedule with clear start and end dates.
Considerations: Should this override other pricing rules during the promo window?
Price Below Specific Competitor
Beat a key competitor on price for strategic SKUs, often by a set dollar or percentage amount.
Considerations: Which competitor(s) matter most for your categories? Are there brand implications?
Psychological Rounding
Present prices in a customer-friendly format (e.g., ending in .99 for sale items or .00 for premium). Applied after base price logic. Considerations: Should rounding vary by brand or product type? Will this affect your perceived value?
These strategies can be combined, layered, and prioritized based on your business needs.
How to Use This Guide to Spark Growth
Conversations
This playbook isn’t just a how-to manual—it’s a conversation starter. Pricing Analysts and Category Managers can use it to align with internal stakeholders, identify new opportunities, and elevate pricing as a strategic function within the organization.
Ways to Use This Internally:
Share with cross-functional teams (e.g., Category Management, Finance, Merchandising) to align on pricing goals and execution workflows.
Use stage-based growth charts (Crawl/Walk/Run) to assess where your pricing team stands today and where you want to go.
Kick off strategy sessions by reviewing your segmentation, automation, and strategy builder maturity.
Highlight wins from use case examples to justify additional investment or pilot new workflows.
Train new team members or onboard adjacent teams by walking through each section of the guide and highlighting how it applies to their day-to-day pricing work.
Conclusion
Let’s unlock more from what you already have.
If you’re seeing value from Price Optimization, that’s just the beginning. There’s always more potential to:
Introduce new rules and strategies.
Layer in new data sources like cost, margin, or sales.
Expand to new product lines or teams.
Automate workflows for faster, smarter execution.
Reach out to your Customer Success contact to start a conversation about what’s possible next.
We’re here to help you scale what works—and uncover what’s next. Let’s talk about what your next opportunity could be.
