Faced with a product similar to a competitor's, the most common reaction from marketplace sellers is to lower the price. It is also, most of the time, the worst available decision — because it is the easiest for any competitor to copy back, starting a race where no one really wins.
With Brazilian e-commerce totaling around R$200 billion in revenue in 2025 (source: E-Commerce Brasil) and the marketplace sector growing 31% a year (source: BXTData), the volume of competitors fighting over the same popular products only tends to increase. In that scenario, competing exclusively on price is a short-term strategy that erodes margin until the operation becomes unviable.
There are more sustainable ways to differentiate that do not depend on selling cheaper than everyone else. The first is speed of entry: finding products in a growth phase before competition saturation, when it is still possible to sell with a healthy margin. The second is choosing the right channel: a product can have a poor margin competing on price in a traditional search marketplace, but a great margin selling through content demonstration on TikTok Shop, where price matters less than the perceived value created by the video. The third is a well-chosen creator partnership: a video that creates the desire to buy reduces the consumer's price sensitivity, because the decision stops being purely rational and comparative.
The fourth and perhaps most important alternative is to track market data continuously: instead of reacting to a competitor by lowering the price, anticipate where demand is growing before the competition shows up in force — which eliminates, at the source, the need to compete on price, because you arrive first instead of arriving late fighting for space.
Price matters, but it should never be the first or the only variable in a marketplace seller's strategy.
Discover market opportunities before the price competition begins, with real data from Vellum Lens.
