PILLAR 6 · Core Operations
Pricing & Profitability
Pricing strategy, the full marketplace cost stack, margin math, and the calculators that turn all of it into a real per-SKU profitability answer.
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Ecommerce Pricing Strategy Fundamentals · Competitive Pricing: How to Price Against Other Sellers/Offers
6.1 Pricing Strategy
Ecommerce Pricing Strategy Fundamentals
Cost-plus, competitive, and value-based pricing approaches compared, with guidance on when each makes sense.
Competitive Pricing: How to Price Against Other Sellers/Offers
How to price competitively without racing to the bottom on margin.
Dynamic and Algorithmic Repricing: How It Works and When to Use It
What repricing software actually does, and the guardrails to set so it doesn't race your price to the floor.
MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) Policies: What They Are and How to Enforce Them
Setting and enforcing a MAP policy across resellers and marketplaces.
Promotions, Discounts, and Deals: Strategy and Marketplace Mechanics
When a discount actually drives incremental profit versus just moving margin you'd have kept anyway.
6.2 Cost Structure & Profitability
The Full Cost Stack of a Marketplace Sale
Every cost line that comes out of a marketplace sale before you see real profit, in the order they apply.
Gross Margin vs. Contribution Margin vs. Net Margin, Explained for Ecommerce
Three margin definitions that get used interchangeably but answer different questions.
How to Calculate True Landed Cost per Unit
Combining unit cost, freight, duties, and per-unit packaging into one true cost figure before pricing.
SKU-Level Profitability Analysis: How to Find Your Money-Losing Products
A process for auditing an existing catalog to find SKUs that look fine on revenue but are quietly unprofitable.
Marketplace Profitability Comparison: Same SKU, Different Channel
How to model the same product's true profitability across two or more marketplaces before deciding where to prioritize inventory.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV) for Ecommerce
How to calculate both, and why the ratio between them matters more than either number alone.
Break-Even ROAS: What It Is and How to Calculate Yours
The single most useful number for deciding whether an ad campaign is actually profitable.
6.3 Calculators
Marketplace Fee Calculator
See what a marketplace actually takes from a sale before you commit to a price.
Product Profitability Calculator
Model true per-unit and per-order profitability including COGS, fees, ad spend, and returns.
Break-Even ROAS Calculator
Find the minimum ROAS at which an ad campaign is still profitable, given your margin.
Margin & Markup Calculator
Quickly solve for cost, price, margin, or markup when you know the other variables.