Which of our brand's products should we monitor first? 3 criteria for setting priorities

Sometimes, while searching for your own company's products, you might discover a sales outlet you have never seen before. Even though the brand has never supplied products to them, these sellers are offering your items on various open markets, often at prices significantly lower than those of official distributors. If products difficult to verify as genuine are mixed in, you must worry about brand image and consumer trust beyond just price issues.

Managing only official distributors does not solve everything either. If some of your active distributors consistently deviate from set price standards, inquiries from other accounts will start coming in, asking, "Why can that seller sell at that price?" or "Shouldn't we lower our prices too?" Ultimately, the brand manager must check where unknown sellers are offering their products and whether existing accounts are properly maintaining their prices.

The problem starts here. If you manage only a few SKUs, you can look them up one by one, but as the number of products grows to dozens or hundreds, it becomes a different story. Without criteria for which products to check first, which sellers and channels to look at, and what to monitor more frequently, you will end up looking at all products with similar intensity. Consequently, you will spend the same amount of time on products where problems actually recur as on those where they do not, making it difficult to distinguish which products genuinely need attention first.

If so, what should brands with many products look at first? If you select products to check first instead of looking at all of them, by what criteria should you set the order?

In this article, we will examine how to prioritize products when starting actual monitoring, and how to divide the verification cycle and channel scope according to those priorities.

Why shouldn't you monitor all products with the same priority?

When prioritizing monitoring for many products, the key is to determine the order of which sales pages to check first and which ones to take action on first among the flood of listings. This is because it is practically difficult to verify all sales issues at the same time with the same intensity.

While resolving inquiries from official distributors who violated pricing, new, unknown sellers might continuously appear on other open markets. Conversely, if you check every single sales page one by one, your response to urgent pricing issues reported by key accounts might be delayed. Moreover, problems do not appear identically across all products. Based on list of brands and products of clients who contact Reatrichs to start monitoring, problem signals were often concentrated on a few products rather than being evenly distributed across the entire product line.

To reflect these differences, we need to divide the monitoring scope into three axes: the number of managed products, the verification cycle, and the target channels. This means deciding how many products, how often, and on which sales channels to check.

These three axes are interconnected. If you increase the number of products while shortening the cycle and widening the channels, the volume of data to verify will explode all at once. If you start by wanting to see all products frequently across all channels, it will take a lot of time just to review the accumulated results, making it difficult to proceed with actual actions like contacting sellers or reporting violations. This is because the time of the person reviewing and making decisions on the results is limited.

Therefore, it is more realistic to apply these three axes differently for each product. This is also the reason why we categorize and view products in a certain order. In the field of international price monitoring, approaches that vary verification intensity based on revenue contribution or price volatility are being proposed. If you have many SKUs, starting by selecting only a portion of products to monitor is also a good method. There is no need to watch products with almost no price changes or reported issues with the same intensity, whereas products with recurring issues should be prioritized.

Before applying the three criteria, it is convenient to lightly filter the candidate list first. If you include products nearing discontinuation or those not sold online in the table, it only increases the number of columns you need to evaluate.

💡 Implementation Tip

From the entire SKU list, keep only the products currently sold online, and mark next to each product whether a standard price has been set. Since it is difficult to determine price deviations for products with empty standard prices, it is best to set standard prices before starting full-scale monitoring. This filtered list will serve as candidates for determining priorities later.

What are the three criteria for determining monitoring priority?

The criteria for setting monitoring priorities are price fluctuations, history of issues, and sales impact. The more criteria a product meets, the higher it is placed on the list of candidates to check first.

Criterion 1: Does the product experience frequent price fluctuations?

Products with frequent price fluctuations are those whose selling prices on sales channels repeatedly deviate from the standard price.

There are two signals you can identify by looking into price-related cases among customer service (CS) and sales records.

One is when a promotion has ended, but the discounted price remains active at some retail channels. If prices lowered during a special exhibition or seasonal sale persist after the event, it can lead to price inquiries from consumers or complaints from official distributors.

The other is when price inquiries for the same product repeatedly come through CS and sales channels. Consumers ask, "They sell it much cheaper elsewhere, is it genuine?" while official distributors contact saying, "It's hard to make sales due to other sellers' prices." When the same product name repeatedly appears across multiple channels like this, there is a clear reason to re-verify the actual sales pages. Lowest-price seller monitoring, which identifies which sellers are driving low prices by channel, can also start with these products.

What matters here is not simply finding the cheapest seller. The judgment differs depending on whether the price was temporarily lowered for a promotion or if the same seller continues to maintain the low price even after the promotion ends. For a brand manager, observing whether deviations recur on the same product or seller is more useful than the price difference itself.

Another thing to define is 'at what point deviation is considered a problem.' This standard varies by product and distribution structure. Therefore, the first step is to set the standard price and tolerance range for each product. Without this standard, judgments may conflict—for example, the sales team might call a price problematic while the marketing team calls it a promotional price.

In this case, comparing the standard price with the actual purchase price (reflecting coupons or shipping costs) is more accurate than using the displayed listing price. It is also good to record and distinguish whether a price is a discount during a promotion period or a price that remains after the promotion has ended.

Here, the standard price is an internal benchmark used by our team to judge deviations. Since requesting sellers to adhere to this price is a separate legal issue, it is best to review separately how to share the standard price with sellers. If you run a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy alongside this, it is also necessary to distinguish the two. As mentioned earlier, the standard price is an internal monitoring benchmark, whereas MAP is a separate policy operated as the price floor that sellers can expose on advertisements or product pages.

💡 Implementation Tip

Select only price-related cases from CS inquiries and sales reports over the past 3 months and count them by product. Compare the timing of each inquiry with past promotion periods to verify if price inquiries for the same product continued after promotions ended. You can mark products with inquiries from multiple channels as candidates for Criterion 1.

Criterion 2: Is it a product with a recurring history of counterfeit or unauthorized sales?

Along with price, past history of issues is highly worth checking first.

Check if there are products with repeated genuine-product inquiries, suspected counterfeit CS cases, or reports of unauthorized sellers recently. Although you cannot label a product as high-risk based on a single inquiry alone, if the same SKU repeatedly appears across various times or channels, there is sufficient reason to prioritize it for the next monitoring cycle.

However, there is no need to immediately classify a seller as problematic just because they are unfamiliar. This is because officially distributed products could simply be resold. Thus, rather than looking solely at "Is this an unregistered seller?", it is better to look at whether inquiries about authenticity have recurred, whether there were sales pages misusing the brand name or logo, and whether there were previous issues associated with the same product or seller.

It is also useful to compile reports of product names slightly modifying the brand name, detailed pages using the official logo without permission, and sales pages claiming "genuine" or "official" without authorization under the same history.

When prioritizing our products, rather than estimating "Which product is easy to counterfeit?", looking at which products have actually generated repeated problem signals in our records is safer and easier to verify.

For example, if authenticity inquiries for a product come through our direct mall while reports about unauthorized sellers for the same product come through the sales team, it is necessary to tie these separate records together. If there is a history of reporting or contacting sellers, view that together as well.

💡 Implementation Tip

Gather authenticity inquiries, suspected counterfeit CS cases, unauthorized seller reports, and action records over the past 6 months by product. If records for the same SKU appear in two or more sources, mark it as a candidate for Criterion 2. Rather than creating a brand-new verification method, gathering the records already accumulated inside our company in one place is the starting point.

📌 Note: It is also worth looking at the cost structure

While looking at records first is basic, even if there is no history of issues in the records, you can check as a reference whether there are products whose cost structure makes it difficult for consumers to notice quality differences if counterfeits occur. Among 18 counterfeit perfumes investigated by the Korea Consumer Agency last August, methanol was detected in 6 of them. The agency analyzed the use of cheap methanol instead of the ethanol used in genuine products as a cost-cutting measure. However, since this does not apply to all product categories, it is better to use it as a reference point when grading rather than as a primary priority criterion.

Criterion 3: Is it a product with a high impact when problems occur?

Products with a high sales impact are those with high sales volume or revenue share, or those with frequent repeat purchases that customers encounter repeatedly.

This does not necessarily mean these products will become targets for unauthorized sellers. It means that when the same price deviation or unauthorized sales issues occur, the scope of affected orders, customers, and revenue can be relatively large.

Therefore, it is best to look at revenue share and repeat purchase rates together, not just recent sales volume. Some products may not have very high sales volume but contribute significantly to revenue due to high unit prices, and products with frequent repeat purchases expose the same customers to prices and sellers repeatedly.

Representative products that consumers use to gauge the overall brand price level also fall into this category. If the price of a representative product fluctuates, the prices of other products can easily become targets for comparison. Products that could lead to consumer safety issues if counterfeits are mixed in—such as products applied to the skin or ingested—should also be viewed as high-impact.

Rather than looking at Criterion 3 in isolation, it is more meaningful to view it alongside the previous two criteria. If price issues recur on a high-volume product, the reason to check it first increases, and if suspected counterfeits or unauthorized seller reports also recur on highly popular products, you can raise its priority in the same way.

💡 Implementation Tip

Mark products that rank high in sales volume, high in revenue share, and high in repeat purchase rate based on the past 6 months. You can mark products that meet at least one of these as candidates for Criterion 3. If it is difficult to view repeat purchase rates separately, you can refer to subscription ratios.

How do you create a monitoring priority matrix using the three criteria?

A monitoring priority matrix is a table designed to show at a glance whether each product meets the three criteria.

There is no need to assign complex weights and scores to each criterion. When you first build the table, you can start with a simple method that just counts how many criteria are met, as shown below.

1. Place the candidate products marked earlier in rows and the three criteria in columns.

2. Transfer the results verified in the implementation tips of each criterion and mark the corresponding boxes.

3. Divide the priority grades: High for two or more marks, Medium for one mark, and Low for zero marks.

4. If you need to prioritize within the same grade, place products with currently active issues first.

5. Write down the assignee and the next check date next to the grade.

Here, High, Medium, and Low are not grades determining the inherent risk of the product itself. They are closer to an operational sequence deciding what our team should check first within our limited time.

When you fill out the table, one interesting combination stands out. Like Product C in the example, it is a product where price issues are not currently identified, but it has a history of past issues and a high sales impact. If you were only looking at prices, it might have been pushed back, but looking at the scope of impact if a problem occurs alongside past records provides a clear reason to check it first. The reason for creating a priority matrix is precisely to avoid selecting monitored products based on a single metric.

Low-grade products can have their verification intensity lowered relatively. If you have too many SKUs and need to reduce the monitoring targets, you can adjust the scope starting with lower-priority products.

However, if sales conditions change, existing grades may also shift. Therefore, this table is closer to a document that is continuously revised based on actual findings rather than a document created once and finalized.

If you have a large number of products and find it difficult to distinguish the order using only the method in step 4, you can transition to a method that assigns weights and scores to each criterion. For example, a brand with frequent price issues might weigh Criterion 1 heavier, while a brand with many counterfeit reports might weigh Criterion 2 heavier. Rather than setting weights from the beginning, it is more realistic to adjust weights after running simple counting for a few cycles and observing actual findings.

How do verification cycles and channel scopes vary based on priority?

Once you categorize the grades, there is no need to check all products in the same cycle and channel scope.

You can adjust operational intensity by looking at high-priority products relatively frequently, and lower-priority products focusing on key sales channels. However, just because a product is High-priority does not mean you must broadly watch all channels identically. The channels to check first will differ based on the reason the product became High-priority.

For example, if a product has a history of repeated price deviations by official sellers, it is best to first closely monitor active accounts and major registered channels. Conversely, if a product has a history of repeated unauthorized sales or suspected counterfeits, there is a reason to expand the scope to open markets or other sales channels where the brand is not officially present. Even within the same High grade, the focus of one is how prices move within our network, while the other is who is selling products outside our network.

Separately from normal grades, during periods when prices are prone to movement—such as major discount events or before/after new product launches—it is also a good strategy to temporarily bump up the verification intensity for those products. What is as important as the cycle is the workflow after discovery.

When problematic sales are discovered in High-grade products, it is best to predetermine who verifies, what to record, and which manager to hand it over to. For example, setting an operational goal for High-grade products to contact sellers or report to platforms within 24–48 hours of discovery, and adjusting deadlines based on team capacity, makes it easier to maintain response speed even if team members change. Leaving a screenshot that shows the product page URL, verification time, selling price, and seller information together makes it easier to reuse the same record when verifying the sales context or reporting to the platform later.

Even if you verify frequently, if the subsequent workflow is not defined, only discovery counts will pile up while actual resolution is delayed.

If you are using monitoring tools or solutions, you must also verify the quality of the data itself before acting on the results. For example, check the following three aspects periodically, and temporarily hold off on automatic notifications or rule applications if matching accuracy is low or data is outdated:

• Collection Success Rate: The percentage of successfully collected prices among target sales pages

• Matching Accuracy: The percentage of sales pages across channels correctly mapped to the identical product

• Data Freshness: The elapsed time from the last collection point to the present

If these three metrics falter, even if the number of discoveries increases, many of them could be false positives.

There is no need to perfectly define the operational methods for all three grades from the start. You can adjust the product and channel scope sequentially by observing the capacity your team can actually handle.

💡 Implementation Tip

For example, select about three products from the High-grade of your priority matrix and check them first for a set period. If you log the number of discoveries, the time taken from discovery to action, and whether prices returned to the standard price after action by product, you can judge based on records rather than intuition whether you can add more products next or if you need to reduce the current scope.

Monitoring Priority FAQ

Q. If we do not monitor all products, won't we miss some?

Yes, that can happen. Setting priorities means you will not check all products with the same intensity, and some may even be excluded. Therefore, instead of completely forgetting about excluded products, you must look at signals coming from other channels, such as CS inquiries or reports from official distributors. If reports for the same product recur or sales conditions change significantly, you can re-include them in your monitoring scope.

Q. By what criteria is the monitoring scope determined?

The monitoring scope is determined by three factors: the number of managed products, the verification cycle, and the target channels. Especially if you have many SKUs, starting with high-priority products is easier to manage than widening the scope from the beginning. When considering the introduction of an online distribution channel monitoring solution, organizing these three aspects first will make it easier to explain specifically what scope you need.

Q. How often should we reset monitoring priorities?

There is no set answer. You can start by reviewing them once a quarter. However, if sales conditions change significantly—such as new product launches, major events, or entry into new distribution channels—it is better to review priorities without waiting for the scheduled check. If you have accumulated discoveries and action records in the meantime, you can use them as a basis for raising or lowering grades.

Q. Do we need to check channels where we are not active?

For high-priority products, it is worth checking. Especially if a product has a history of repeated unauthorized sales or suspected counterfeits, there is a reason to widen the check scope. However, since the mere fact that a product is sold on an inactive channel does not always indicate a problem, it is best to decide whether to respond after verifying both the history of issues and the sales context discussed earlier.

Monitoring Priority: Selecting Just Three This Week

Searching for sellers late every time a price complaint comes in, and checking from scratch every time an unknown seller is discovered, becomes increasingly difficult to handle as SKUs grow.

Fortunately, we already have records we can access. Products with repeated price inquiries, products with counterfeit or unauthorized sales reports, and products with high sales volume, revenue share, or repeat purchase ratios are all within those records.

Trying to check all products with the same intensity at all times can make operations difficult from the very start. Setting priorities is ultimately about deciding where our team should spend time first right now.

Starting small is perfectly fine.

Open your SKU list tomorrow and mark three things: whether price issues recurred, whether there was a history of counterfeit or unauthorized sales, and whether the sales impact is high. Select just about three products that meet two or more of these criteria. Those three will be the products to check first this week, forming the very first row of your priority matrix.

▶︎ Reference Materials

• E-Today, "Harmful substances found in 1 in 3 counterfeit cosmetics, perfume methanol levels up to 484 times the limit", 2026. 8. 14. (Reporting on Korea Consumer Agency investigation results), https://www.etoday.co.kr/news/view/2614623

• FineData Engineering, "E-commerce Price Intelligence: Complete Strategy Guide", 2026. 2. 9. (Updated 2026. 7. 28.), https://finedata.ai/blog/ecommerce-price-intelligence/

• PromptCloud, "Ecommerce Price Monitoring Strategy: From Scraping to Pricing Intelligence", 2026. 4. 27., https://www.promptcloud.com/blog/ecommerce-pricing-intelligence-guide/