The price wars are back for the holidays.
Looking to differentiate itself to the growing number of shoppers who compare prices before buying on the web, online retail platform Zulily debuted new efforts aimed at ensuring its prices beat Walmart and Amazon this holiday.
A new price comparison feature found on both the Zulily app and its website is marked by a purple “Best Promise Badge” on certain products. Underneath the badge, Zulily will display prices from both Amazon and Walmart if the product’s UPC code matches an identical product from either company’s inventory system.
“While shoppers perceive that Amazon and Walmart have the lowest prices, we are confident that we provide shoppers the best deal,” Zulily president Jeff Yurcisin explained in a statement. “Pricing is so easily obfuscated across the web. When you think about saving $5 to $10 on an item, and purchasing multiple items, per order, which many of our customers do, that’s meaningful to a household budget at scale.
“We want to make shopping fun,” Yurcisin continued, “but also recognize that our customers are savvy and making informed choices as families seek to maximize their budgets, especially during the holiday season.”
Zulily also pledged to automatically match the lowest price for items offered cheaper elsewhere, especially those sold through Amazon and Walmart’s e-commerce channels. The “Best Price Promise” program will run from Oct. 2 to Dec. 19 this year in the U.S.
Zulily says more shoppers than ever are going through this process on their own already, with 59 percent of shoppers claiming to do more comparison shopping than they have in the past.
The Google Omnichannel Holiday Study for 2018-2019 also found that 90 percent of holiday shoppers used more than one platform to shop during the year—something Zulily hopes to capitalize on by making its platform a one-stop-shop for comparison shopping.
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“In connection with our new competitor price feature, and in support of our mission to deliver value, we also created the Best Price Promise to bring a level of transparency and simplicity to the customer by elevating the retail tradition of price match guarantees in the age of mobile shopping,” Yurcisin concluded. “We are always focused on how we matter in the lives of our customers, and while our loyalists love us for the special, unique finds you can’t find anywhere else, we also know they love to shop and purchase beloved household name brands at a great value.”
In August, Zulily announced a restructuring effort that would result in “significant layoffs” as Yurcisin and his team stepped up investments designed to improve the platform’s technology and user experience.