Even if you haven’t read any of our latest Pricing Reports, chances are you’ve noticed retailers becoming a lot more promotional in recent years. And today’s promotions seem to come not only from every direction, but without much directional purpose: they seem utterly haphazard.

The problem, of course, is that retailers spent the last century getting really good at setting prices: knowing which levers to push – and when – in order to both influence consumer behavior and maximize on related margins whenever possible. But with the advent of mobile technologies, all of that pricing work went – in large part – out the window. Customers could see whatever pricing strategies a retailer was up to, and they started to game the system in their own favor. And between Walmart’s squeeze on the physical and Amazon’s grip on everything else, retailers have arrived at a place where promotions seem both random and unrelenting.

If you have read our any of our Pricing Reports over the past few years, you know that we’re well ready for this trend to stop. From our 2013 report:

“We recognize that we are unlikely to stop the seemingly endless barrage of promotional activity retailers engage in, but we strongly recommend improving measurement tools, both before and after the fact. That measurement should go beyond just the actual aggregate gross margin improvement or sales lift associated with price tweaking, but also include the cost to store operations and other personnel to execute those price changes. As in prior years, we hope to see retailers return to what we’ve called the virtuous pricing cycle, “Plan-Execute-Measure. ” This seems overtly simplistic, yet it’s what the data is calling for.”

So as I walk the show floor at NRF this year, the types of technologies I’m hoping to see most are those that help retailers get back to this “plan-excecute-measure ” cycle: in particular, those that help measure the impact of price changes and measure the impact of conflicting channel prices. I’m not sure what we’ll find, but I’m hoping it’s something we can report back on in a few weeks when we return with our NRF wrapup reportage (and corresponding webinar – watch for details to come shortly).

See you on the flip side!