[Trucks Parts Service] Building cohesive pricing strategies key to parts distributors’ e-commerce success

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Setting prices in the truck parts industry has never been easy.

In a market where customer demographics, order volumes and purchasing channels all impact retail price, aftermarket distributors must be masters of the pricing matrix. Distributors must devise (and constantly revise) complex pricing structures that entice new customers and sustain existing customer relationships while also maintaining healthy product margins and long-term profits.

It’s a constant challenge. A task that can be learned and even mastered but is never truly complete. And it’s only getting harder.

To have a functional, flexible and comprehensive pricing matrix in today’s aftermarket, distributors must also be masters of their digital footprints. Today’s truck parts customers may still prefer in-store sales to online purchasing on the whole, but there’s no guarantee that tomorrow’s buyers will feel the same. E-commerce sales in the United States rose by 44 percent last year — the largest single-year shift this millennium, reported Digital Commerce 360 — and acceptance of digital commerce has never been higher.

In the aftermarket, this growing customer shift means distributors must be quickly adapting their pricing matrices to account for e-engagement.

During a session on digital selling at virtual Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week (HDAW) in January, Zilliant’s Chief Marketing Officer Lindsay Duran broke down exactly why careful pricing is a requirement for aftermarket e-commerce, and why one-size-fits-all pricing used by the nation’s largest e-tailers doesn’t work for online wholesale distribution sales.

Duran says the most important thing for distributors to remember when building a digital sales presence is to keep one’s focus on customers and their ideal purchasing experience. She says distributors do a great job developing highly informed, capable sales teams to support their customers in the field and says when customers interact with a distributor online they expect a similar experience.

Read the full article on TruckPartsService.