A multichannel pricing strategy answers one question per SKU per channel: what price is right HERE? Copying one price everywhere feels consistent and quietly loses money in both directions, underpriced where fees are heavy, overpriced where the channel’s buyers are sharpest. The workable discipline is base-plus-markup: one base price you maintain, and per-channel rules that derive each channel’s price deliberately.
Why channel prices should differ
Fee stacks differ. A marketplace commission of double-digit percent changes the margin math against your fee-free store, the full fee model. The same sticker cannot be right on both.
Buyer expectations differ. eBay attracts deal-hunters who compare hard; Amazon buyers pay for speed and trust; your store’s returning customers are the least price-sensitive audience you have. Each channel’s competitive set prices around you differently.
Strategic roles differ. Some sellers run marketplaces as acquisition (thin margin, new customers) and the store as the margin engine; others use marketplaces for velocity on proven SKUs. The role dictates the markup, per channel, sometimes per category.
The base-plus-markup model
- Maintain one base price per SKU, in your store or hub, the number your team thinks in.
- Set per-channel rules: marketplace markup to absorb its stack (a percentage, or per-category values), store price at base, promotional overrides where needed.
- Derive, never re-type. Channel prices compute from base plus rule; a base change or a fee change propagates everywhere in one edit. In Unifystock this is the rules engine (simple mode: one markup field per channel), applied automatically to every synced listing.
- Reprice from evidence: sold-price research sets the band per channel, and your own sell-through corrects it, if a price change craters days of cover, you underpriced; if velocity stalls, you overshot.
The constraints to respect
MAP agreements bind everywhere. Minimum advertised price commitments from your suppliers do not care which channel you broke them on; encode MAP as a floor in your rules so no markup or promotion can cross it.
Marketplace fair-pricing systems watch cross-channel gaps. Amazon’s pricing systems can suppress offers priced significantly above your price elsewhere; egregious channel gaps on identical items also read badly to buyers who shop both. Differences should be explainable by fees and service, not opportunism.
Promotions need containment. A store-only sale is fine; a forgotten sale price syncing to every marketplace is a margin incident. Promotional prices should be explicit rule overrides with end dates, not edits to base.
Running it operationally
The strategy survives only if it runs itself: prices set by rule, synced in real time alongside stock, and changed in one place. Manual per-channel repricing decays within weeks, the sale that ends late, the marketplace that never got the fee-change adjustment, the new SKU listed at base everywhere. With rules, the fee update becomes one line and the strategy is whatever you declared it to be, still true months later.
Common questions
Is charging more on Amazon than my store allowed?
A markup that reflects the fee stack is normal practice. Watch two lines: your own price elsewhere (fair-pricing systems compare) and buyer perception on identical branded items. Explainable differences are fine; arbitrage-sized gaps invite trouble.
Should every SKU carry the same channel markup?
Start uniform per channel, then split by category where fee categories differ, and by SKU role where strategy differs (loss-leaders, exclusives). Let exceptions earn their complexity.
How do repricers fit into this?
Rule-based repricing with floors, the safe shape, can sit on top of base-plus-markup for competitive categories. Floors from MAP and margin come first; automation without floors is how sellers end up famous.
What about currency and international channels?
Same model, one more rule layer: base price, channel markup, currency conversion with a buffer for volatility. Deliberate, derived, and changed in one place.
Declare the strategy once
One base price synced everywhere in real time from $49/month with unlimited orders, and per-channel rules with MAP floors on the plans above. See pricing.