SUCCESS STORY: WSOY

Book titles have a finite timespan of interest among consumers, and it is difficult to accurately estimate the demand for individual book titles and hence the amount of physical copies of each title that should be printed. With the help of Priceff’s solution WSOY can mitigate the discrepancy between estimated demand (amount printed) and actual demand, by adjusting the prices of book titles based on real-time demand data. This way, WSOY is making sure both that titles are not sold out too soon, which would indicate that the price is unnecessarily low, and that titles are not left unsold due to a too high price.

WSOY uses Priceff’s pricing service for pricing both their long-tail titles and their new titles. At the time of writing, Priceff adjusts the prices of over 2,500 titles automatically on a daily basis. The benefits of demand-based dynamic pricing derive from the automated process of increasing prices of titles that sell better than expected, thus increasing margins, and finding more suitable price levels for less popular titles, increasing sales volumes.

“In 2019, the inventory turnover for our long-tail products was 0.13, and in 2020, after implementing dynamic pricing, the turnover rate for the same products was 0.44. Furthermore, the revenue of our online store increased by 522% compared to the previous year. The revenue increase is also affected by reasons other than pricing, but pricing has played a major role in getting consumers to shop specifically in our online store.” says Veli-Pekka Matilainen, Sales Director of WSOY.

First, a pilot project was conducted, during which sales and price data was transmitted manually between Priceff and WSOY using CSV files on a daily basis. After the successful pilot period, an integration was built between the Priceff API and the WooCommerce platform, automating all data flow and price updates. Now, instead of setting exact prices for each title, WSOY allows the algorithm to make informed daily price adjustments within pre-defined price intervals. Priceff’s pricing solution does not only benefit WSOY in the form of increased inventory turnover and revenue, but also WSOY’s customers in terms of providing them with fair market prices for all products.