Multi-format pricing policy: one or more pricing schedules?
72% of prices are exactly the same between the website and physical stores at major multichannel retailers (American Economic Review, 2017), so the widespread price discrepancy is not justified. What is justified: a common policy (rules, objectives, protected KPIs) broken down into pricing grids targeted at formats with genuinely different costs or uses, with curbside pickup (32% of French households) and online marketplaces at the top of the list.
Today, a typical French retailer operates—under a single brand—a hypermarket, one or more neighborhood store formats, a curbside pickup service, and often a presence on an online marketplace. Each format has its own cost structure, its own shopping habits, and its own level of price comparison by customers.
Should you use a single pricing structure to maintain consistency, or a separate structure for each format to stay profitable? The answer is neither—as this guide explains in detail.
Why a Single Pricing Structure Can't Survive in a Multi-Format Environment
The argument in favor of a single pricing structure is always the same: the consistency perceived by the customer. It’s a valid argument—until you confront it with the reality of costs. A drive-through location incurs order-preparation costs that a hypermarket does not; a marketplace charges a commission that the company’s own channel does not. Applying a strictly identical price across the board amounts to sacrificing margins on the most expensive channels or overcharging on the least expensive ones.
This guide is part of a series on retail pricing policies.
The real constraints imposed by each format
- Hypermarket, high foot traffic, intense price competition on a core group of visible products. This is often where the overall price image is determined.
- Convenience, smaller shopping basket, impulse purchases. Genuine price sensitivity, but less consistent.
- Drive-thru, specific order-fulfillment costs, and an average basket size that is often higher. A format in its own right—not just a store without a salesperson.
- Marketplace, platform fees, direct comparison with other sellers. The price is partially beyond the retailer's direct control.
The Real Number: Are Prices Really That Different Across Channels?
72% is the proportion of cases where the price is exactly the same between a retailer’s website and its physical store, based on a sample of 56 major multichannel retailers in 10 countries; price differences, when they occur, are concentrated primarily in drugstores and office supplies, not in food or electronics (American Economic Review, Cavallo, 2017).
The real issue, then, is not to justify a broad, across-the-board discrepancy, but to precisely calibrate the targeted discrepancies—which are justified by genuinely different costs or uses, with drive and marketplace at the top of the list.
Curbside pickup: a format that’s already making a big impact in France
32% is the percentage of French households that regularly use curbside pickup for their grocery shopping, a channel that has seen its revenue grow by 8.7 billion euros over the past ten years to become a cornerstone of the French food retail sector (FEVAD, 2025).
A channel that reaches nearly one-third of French households cannot be treated as a mere extension of the physical store. Its cost structure and purchasing patterns justify a separate pricing structure, provided that it remains consistent so as not to create inconsistencies perceived by customers who switch between curbside pickup and in-store shopping.
A common policy, differentiated pay scales
- Establish a common policy: the same rules, the same objectives for each category, and the same core set of protected KPIs for all formats.
- When applying a pricing grid by format within a limited scope, only those items where the cost or usage actually differs justify a deviation.
- Understand the extent of the discrepancy; a discrepancy that is too significant undermines the confidence of multichannel customers.
- Document and track every deviation—never an uncontrolled byproduct of siloed organizations.
The Specific Case of the Marketplace
The marketplace is the only format where the retailer does not have complete control over the rules of the game—commissions, the algorithm for product promotion, and direct, immediate comparison with other sellers. Without explicit rules, the marketplace becomes the channel where prices are set independently of the overall pricing policy, either out of an excess of caution or an excess of complacency.
At Booper, the Booper MPS platform allows you to configure channel-specific pricing rules (store, curbside pickup, marketplace) while maintaining a unified pricing policy managed from a central location. GENIUS Monitoring tracks discrepancies across channels to ensure that no deviations go unnoticed.
Multi-format governance: Who resolves discrepancies between channels?
Without a cross-functional owner, each format optimizes its own local performance: the drive-through manager maximizes the channel’s margin, the e-commerce manager maximizes conversion, and the hypermarket manager maximizes the store’s price image. Together, without coordination, they create discrepancies that customers perceive as pure inconsistency. See also the article in this series on price alignment strategy.
A multi-format approach does not require a single, rigid pricing grid, nor does it require independent, inconsistent pricing grids: it requires a common policy, applied judiciously where cost or usage truly justifies it. To build this architecture with our teams, learn about our MPS solution —modular pricing by channel.
FAQ
No, strictly speaking, but it’s not a completely independent pricing structure for each format either. Best practice is to define a common policy and then adapt it into differentiated pricing structures based on each channel’s cost structure and level of comparison.
Less than you might think. A study of 56 major multichannel retailers in 10 countries shows that prices are the same in 72% of cases between the website and the physical store.
The drive-through combines a logistics cost structure that differs from that of the store with a different shopping pattern (planned shopping trips, higher average basket size)—two differences that justify a separate pricing structure.
By establishing explicit rules about what can vary and what must remain consistent with the overall policy. Without these rules, the marketplace becomes a channel that is out of control.
A designated owner of the multi-format policy—separate from the operational managers of each channel—who has an overview of the consistency of pricing.
It exists everywhere, but its complexity is particularly pronounced in France, where hypermarkets, neighborhood stores, curbside pickup, and online marketplaces have historically coexisted, often under the same brand.
See also in this feature
- Retail Pricing Policies: A Guide to Choosing the Right Strategy
- Price Alignment Strategy: When to Follow the Market, When to Deviate from It
- Price Differences Across Channels: Consistency, Not Uniformity
Sources: Cavallo, “Are Online and Offline Prices Similar?”, American Economic Review 2017 · FEVAD, Analysis of the E-commerce Market for Food and Grocery Products (PGC-FLS) 2025.
A franchisor cannot impose a resale price: the law prohibits it from doing so; it can only recommend a price or set a maximum. A franchisee’s margin is therefore governed by a documented target, defined by network segment rather than on a store-by-store basis, and applied uniformly to all retail locations within the same segment. Three tiers are usually sufficient: aggressive pricing online, geopricing in-store, and an optimized margin for the franchisee.
Optimix merged with Maxxing in July 2025, and PricingHUB was acquired by Akeneo in June 2026. In less than a year, two of the three software providers most frequently used by French retailers underwent changes in ownership, raising the question of alternatives for their customers.
This comparison evaluates Optimix XPA, PricingHUB, Mercio, Yieldigo, and BOOPER based on what truly sets a pricing solution apart in France: native support for French regulations, pricing by store or by zone, the approval process before a price changes at the register, and roadmap independence.
A manufacturer that raises its list price does not set the price on the shelf. Between the negotiated list price and the displayed price lie the retailer, its markup, and its promotions. What is measured is the price elasticity of each product, retailer by retailer.