We’ve begun analyzing your responses to our 2014 Pricing benchmark survey. This year we’ve got a really interesting take on the data, as half our respondents have their retail headquarters in the UK. We have been somewhat surprised by the differences we’ve found. Let’s take a quick look at some of those differences.

It will surprise almost no one to learn that the US is in the grips of promotions fever. Forty-four percent of respondents acknowledge they they’ve become more promotions driven over the past three years. But it is very surprising to discover only 17% of UK-based respondents report this to be true. Instead, about a third said they’ve not changed their pricing strategy at all (vs. only 13% of US-based retailers), while 28% report a deeper focus on key-item pricing (approximately the same as US-based retailers). UK retailers report they’ve become more seasonally focused four times as often as US-based retailers (12% vs. 3%).

Interestingly, at least as of January, when this survey was conducted, hyper-promotional activities hadn’t seemed to hurt US retailers’ top lines too badly. Far more reported better than average comparable store and channel sales improvements than their UK-counterparts.

Those sales came at a cost though. More than a quarter of US-based retailers reported gross margin decreases across the 2013 holiday season, vs. only 11% of UK-based retailers.

The impact of these promotions can be seen in operational challenges as well. US-based retailers are far more apt to cite forecasting the impact of potential pricing decision, measuring the impact of pricing decisions they’ve already made and coordinating with marketing on promotions and offers as top-three operational issues. UK-based retailers had far more straightforward concerns: Keeping up with competitors’ prices, keeping up with pricing deals cut by buyers with manufacturers, and minimizing their markdown spend.

The UK’s concern about competitors’ prices became thematic in the study. They were more apt to cite lack of clean price, competitor and purchase data as an inhibitor to effective pricing (40% vs. 31%) and they have a propensity to build home-grown solutions to analyze competitive pricing rather than purchase a packaged solution (although less than half have any kind of competitive price feed into their systems at all). Further, even though they express greater concern about competitive pricing, they place an equal value of the role competitors’ prices play in creating their pricing strategy.

Half of all companies use competitors’ prices as a major input into their pricing strategy. Despite the negatives we’ve discussed about US-based retailers’ pricing strategies, they have certain distinct advantages over their UK counterparts. Because they value inventory and promotions history, they also use them. Almost 60% report current inventory levels and clean promotions history play a major role in helping them set their pricing strategy, and 50% ascribe a major role to planned inventory levels as well. Approximately a quarter of UK-based retailers report those data elements playing a major role in their pricing strategies. We found that befuddling. In fact, given UK-based retailers’ worries over competitors’ prices, it’s hard to understand how they’ve avoided the promotional cycles we’ve gotten into here in the states.

On some levels, this is certainly something they should be applauded for. It keeps their retail environment more stable, for sure. But we can only wonder when the first retailers will break the ice and move into a more promotional mode of operation. We might wish for the opposite to occur: for US-based retailers to follow the UK’s lead and back off from all the machinations around price they’ve gotten ourselves into. Unfortunately human nature seems to dictate the opposite. Perhaps the poor results reported by many US-retailers since this survey was conducted will start to shift points of view.

This is just the first taste of what is turning out to be an incredibly rich bed of data. You’ll have to wait for the final report to read some of the dramatic differences between Retail Winners and their peers. It will be hitting your in-boxes at the beginning of April.