How does competitor price history help plan a seasonal campaign?

It shows when each competitor started moving prices in past seasons, how deep the discounts went, which products were used as traffic drivers and how quickly prices recovered. That lets you plan timing, depth, product selection and recovery from evidence rather than memory.

How long does GetRealPrice keep price history?

GetRealPrice stores price history indefinitely from the date monitoring begins. Every season you monitor adds to the record, so patterns become clearer over time.

How should Ramadan and Eid price history be compared across years?

Align the data by the event date rather than the calendar month, because Islamic calendar events move earlier by around 10 to 11 days each Gregorian year.

When should monitoring start before a seasonal campaign?

Start well before the pre-season window, ideally several weeks ahead, so the history captures the first competitor moves and not only the peak.

Using Price History to Plan Seasonal Campaigns in the Middle East

Ramadan, Eid, back-to-school, White Friday and year-end sales each follow their own price rhythm. Here is how retailers and brands can use competitor price history to plan seasonal campaigns in the Middle East — when to move, how deep to go and when to recover margin.

Why Seasonal Campaigns Need Price History

The Middle East retail calendar is built around a handful of high-stakes seasons: Ramadan and the two Eids, summer travel, back-to-school, White Friday and the year-end sales. Each one concentrates demand into a few weeks, and each one has its own pattern of competitor behaviour. Some competitors move early to set reference prices; others hold until the final days and then cut hard. Some promotions last a weekend; others run for the whole season with rotating hero products.

Most campaign plans are still built from internal data: last year's sales, last year's discount depth and the budget for this year. That tells you what you did, but not what the market did around you. Without competitor price history, teams repeat the same timing every year and only discover after the event that a rival started a week earlier or recovered prices two days sooner.

Price history turns the season from a memory into a record. It shows, product by product and competitor by competitor, when prices moved, how far they went and how quickly they came back.

What Competitor Price History Shows You

When you review one or more past seasons for your key products, look for five patterns:

Start dates. When did each competitor make its first meaningful move? Early movers usually signal that they want to own the reference price for the season.
Depth and steps. Did prices drop once, or in several steps? Step patterns often mean a competitor reacts to the market rather than following a fixed plan.
Hero products. Which products were cut deepest, and which stayed at full price? Competitors protect margin on some lines and use others to drive traffic.
Recovery timing. How long after the peak did prices return to normal? Retailers that recover slowly give away margin they did not need to.
Stock behaviour. Did low prices end because of a planned recovery or because the competitor ran out of stock? Stock availability data next to price history makes the difference clear.

GetRealPrice stores price history indefinitely from the date monitoring begins, so every season you monitor adds to the record. The longer you monitor, the easier it is to tell a one-off move from a habit. Our earlier article on how price history transforms buying and ranging decisions covers the day-to-day uses; this post focuses on campaign planning.

Build a Season Calendar from the Data

Use history to build a simple calendar for each major season. For every key category, record:

The pre-season window, when the first competitors usually start moving.
The peak window, when most competitors are in promotion and price comparison is most intense.
The recovery window, when prices typically return to normal.
The competitors to watch, based on who led, who followed and who stayed out.

Remember that Islamic calendar events move earlier by around 10–11 days each Gregorian year, so align Ramadan and Eid history by the event date rather than by the calendar month. Our playbooks for Ramadan and Eid Al-Adha show how these windows differ, and our analysis of White Friday versus Black Friday shows how a fixed-date event compares.

Set Campaign Prices with Evidence

With a season calendar in place, campaign decisions become more specific:

Timing. If a key competitor has cut prices on your hero products about a week before the season in past years, plan your first move to land at the same time or slightly earlier, rather than reacting after shoppers have formed a reference price.
Depth. Use the depth competitors actually reached on comparable products as a guide. In many categories, the visible discount needed to stay competitive on hero products sits in an illustrative range of 10–25%, while most of the range can stay close to normal price.
Product selection. Concentrate discounts on the products shoppers compare most, and protect margin on items that competitors historically left at full price.
Recovery. Plan the return to normal price in steps, timed to when competitors recovered in past seasons, so you do not stay discounted after the market has moved on.

Feed these decisions into your rules. Automated Pricing can apply season-specific floors, ceilings and competitor rules, and Promotions Monitoring confirms in-season whether competitors are following their usual pattern. For a worked example of a campaign built on monitored data, read a global platform's seasonal campaign playbook in the UAE.

Measure the Season Afterwards

When the season ends, compare your plan with what happened. Did competitors start when history suggested? Were your hero products positioned where you intended during the peak? How many days did you stay discounted after competitors recovered? Write the answers down next to the price history for each category. Each season you monitor makes the next plan more accurate, especially for events that move through the Gregorian calendar.

Seasonal Campaign Planning Checklist

Start monitoring key products and competitors well before the season, so the history covers the full pre-season window.
Review past seasons for start dates, discount depth, hero products and recovery timing.
Align Ramadan and Eid history by event date, not by calendar month.
Build a season calendar per category with pre-season, peak and recovery windows.
Choose hero products for discounts and protect margin on the rest.
Set season-specific floors, ceilings and recovery steps in your pricing rules.
Check in-season promotions against the historical pattern every day.
Record what happened after the season to improve next year's plan.

Plan the Next Season with Evidence

Seasonal campaigns in the Middle East are too important to plan from memory. Competitor price history shows when the market moves, how far it goes and when it recovers, and it grows more valuable with every season you monitor. Most GetRealPrice clients are live within 24–48 hours, so there is still time to capture the next season in full. If you would like to see how Price History could support your next campaign, book a short demo with our team.