Rule-Based Pricing

What is Rule-Based Pricing?
Rule-based pricing is pricing automation driven by explicit, human-defined if-then rules — for example, "match the lowest competitor among A, B, and C", "stay 5% below the market median", or "never price below cost plus 10%". Each rule references live market data and guardrails set by the pricing team.

Rule-based systems are transparent and predictable, which makes them the usual starting point for retailers adopting automated pricing: every price change can be traced to a specific rule. Their limitation is that rules do not learn — they cannot discover that a product tolerates a higher margin, only enforce what a human already decided.

Many teams run a hybrid: rules define hard guardrails (minimum margin, MAP compliance) while an AI or optimization layer proposes prices inside those boundaries.