Companies that have designed products for decades to stand out on store shelves are now being pressured by online retailers to make their packaging lighter to cut down on shipping costs.

Guru Hariharan, Boomerang's chief executive officer, discusses Amazon's private label strategy and the outlook for the holiday retail sales season with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

Guru Hariharan's view on the opportunity for online grocery this holiday season

For consumer goods manufacturers, it is hard to understate the growing importance of e-commerce — especially Amazon. See a summary of recommendations on how to win in the Amazon era.

Guru Hariharan, Boomerang's chief executive officer and a former Amazon.com Inc. employee, and Bloomberg Intelligence's Jitendra Waral discuss Amazon's second-quarter earnings with Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

Amazon Prime Day 2018 article featuring Boomerang Commerce's data analysis on pricing discounts by category

“This symbiotic relationship between Amazon and leading brands legitimizes Prime Day, as well as those brands serious about stepping up their e-commerce game,” said Guru Hariharan, chief executive officer of Boomerang.

Amazon Prime VP Cem Sibay & Boomerang CEO Guru Hariharan discuss Amazon Prime Day with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

Boomerang Commerce CEO Guru Hariharan joins Bloomberg's Emily Chang with the latest on e-commerce giants Walmart and Amazon. (Source: Bloomberg)

Coverage of Boomerang's launch of CommerceIQ. The Supply Side section of Talk Business & Politics focuses on the companies, organizations, issues and individuals engaged in providing products and services to retailers.

Bloomberg's Spencer Soper covers the latest Amazon price war and its impact to CPG's product margins using data from Boomerang Commerce.

Guru Hariharan, Boomerang Commerce chief executive officer, and Bloomberg Gadfly's Shira Ovide discuss how Amazon is changing the landscape of the corporate world with Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." Ovide's opinions are her own. (Source: Bloomberg)

Boomerang Commerce CEO Guru Hariharan and Mark Mahaney discuss this years top Amazon products and other factors that may have contributed to the company's best ever holiday season. (Source: CNBC - "Echo Dot and price wars help catapult Amazon as this year's leader in retail")

Guru Hariharan, Boomerang Commerce's chief executive officer, discusses the battle between Amazon.com Inc.'s Echo and Apple Inc.'s HomePod voice assistants. He speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

Guru Hariharan, Boomerang Commerce's chief executive officer, discusses the outlook for holiday retail sales with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology." (Source: Bloomberg)

Guru Hariharan, CEO of retail and e-commerce pricing analytics firm Boomerang Commerce, says retailers should focus on unique products or experiences and not necessarily on teaming up with another company, which could dilute their brand or individuality.

Boomerang’s PPM dashboards allow Groupon to measure performance, compare results and assess pricing health. The tools also inform offer-pricing strategies that can drive conversions on its e-commerce website.

CNBC's Courtney Reagan reports on the aftermath of Amazon's Prime Day and says it is on pace to be the biggest global shopping event in the company's history.

Shoppers who bought from marketplace sellers received a deeper discount, on average, than if they bought directly from Amazon.

According to an analysis done for CBS MoneyWatch by retail technology firm Boomerang Commerce, of the 100 top-selling toys and games, electronics, and home and kitchen products on Amazon, the Seattle-based company enjoys an advantage over its closest rival Walmart (WMT). Boomerang found that Walmart's prices are on average 35 percent higher than Amazon's in toys and games and 20 percent more in home and kitchen.

I take to heart what Guru Hariharan, CEO of Boomerang Commerce, said me recently about the future of retailing. In his view, this is the age of technology where art and science must intersect. Timely, data-driven problems and decisions must be solved by machines while experiential and relationship-driven decisions must still be made by people.

Shoppers who got addicted to sales during the last recession have more tools than ever to cross-check prices and find bargains, creating a race to the bottom — particularly on clothes.

Guru Hariharan, Boomerang Commerce CEO and former Amazon executive, and Mike Olson, Piper Jaffray senior research analyst, discuss Amazon's march toward $1,000 per share and the tech giant's growing dominance in sectors like retail.

Watch Boomerang Commerce CEO Guru Hariharan share his thoughts on the future of retail and Amazon on CNBC Squawk Alley

"Benchmarking against Amazon is going to become hard," said Guru Hariharan, a former Amazon manager who now sells pricing software to retailers as chief executive of Mountain View, California-based Boomerang Commerce.

Cooper Smith, an analyst at research firm L2, estimates that about 18 to 22 percent of clothing sales will be online this year. That’s a critical juncture. His research and that from firms like Boomerang Commerce shows that when online penetration in a merchandising category hits 20 percent, that’s when Amazon steps up its game to seek more of that market. Analysts say one example is what happened when consumer electronics hit that threshold around 2005, and the liquidation of chains like Circuit City followed.

Retailers are using artificial-intelligence software to set optimal prices, testing textbook theories of competition; antitrust officials worry such systems raise prices for consumers

The right price—the one that will extract the most profit from consumers’ wallets—has become the fixation of a large and growing number of quantitative types, many of them economists who have left academia for Silicon Valley. It’s also the preoccupation of Boomerang Commerce, a five-year-old start-up founded by Hariharan, an Amazon alum.

Beyond letting customers skip lines, the technology gives Amazon valuable data, said Guru Hariharan, founder of Boomerang Commerce Inc., which designs software for large retailers. Even if customers don’t purchase everything they touch, there’s value in understanding what shoppers consider but don’t ultimately buy, he said. That makes it worthwhile for Amazon to work through the kinks in the technology.

Founded in 2012, the idea for Boomerang’s platform came to be during founder and CEO Gurushyam Hariharan’s time on the retail merchandising and supply chain team at Amazon in the early 2000s. He saw an opportunity to leverage technology and provide it as a service to other retailers enabling them with a platform that they can use to drive merchandising decisions and strategy and to optimize their pricing.

Retail technology platform provider Boomerang Commerce releases its newest generation Price Performance Management (PPM) application, designed to unify data from stores, web and mobile channels to help merchandisers choose pricing strategies that increase revenue without eroding margin.

Today, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s customers include retailers like Staples and GNC, and it has received more than $20 million in venture funding from Shasta Ventures and others. “I’m not a vocal political person,” Hariharan said. “We’ve taken a stance to fight for our employees. We obviously have immigrants, people on H-1B visas, and we sponsor green cards for exceptional employees.”

Boomerang Commerce offers solutions that help retailers optimize their pricing and selection. It sorts through retail data from a number of angles to show the best way to price, place and promote their products.

The fourth quarter remains the most critical period for these and other retailers. It is interesting to note that a recent study by Boomerang Commerce continues to rate Amazon as the leading retailer with over 5 million items in its Toys & Games category compared to less than 100,000 items available at other retailers. Walmart is viewed as more competitive in its assortment and pricing with 46% of its items priced below Amazon’s. Walmart’s edge seems to be coming from the recently acquired Jet.com with its sharper pricing. Conversely, Target is viewed as not having shifted much in its pricing with 58% of its items priced higher than Amazon.

Groupon Goods, a unit of Groupon that offers tangible goods rather than local experiences or travel deals, has boosted sales at a rate of 12% since enlisting the services of competitive pricing technology provider Boomerang Commerce.

While Amazon wasn’t alone in offering deals, the e-commerce goliath offered the lowest prices, according to data from Boomerang Commerce. Boomerang’s finds that Amazon’s prices were 36% lower than those offered by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (No. 4) and Toys ‘R’ Us Inc. (No. 35), both of which were running promotions to compete with Prime Day, and 29% cheaper than Target Corp.

These are the times that traditional retailers become super vulnerable and not only lose market share, but start to lose trust on their low prices," Hariharan told Business Insider.

Full episode of 'Bloomberg West.' Guests include: Mark Hurd, Oracle's co-chief executive officer, James Cakmak, Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. analyst, Guru Hariharan, Boomerang Commerce CEO, Sunny Dhillon, principal at Signia Ventures Partners. and Jonathan Hjembo, TeleGeography analyst.

So how are the deals? Retail and e-commerce pricing analytics firm Boomerang Commerce analyzed 27,721 Prime Day deals offered during the first 10 hours of Prime Day. Boomerang found that 15.3% of all deals offered were for 50% or more off the list price that Amazon sets and nearly half (49.5%) of all deals were for 10% off.

“Beyond just directly competing with Amazon, Prime Day is also an opportunity for retailers competing with Amazon to test their infrastructure, smooth out any rough edges and provide a quick revenue boost,” said Guru Hariharan, chief executive of Boomerang Commerce, a company that provides data and consulting services in retail areas like pricing and assortment. “Retailers should also think about not necessarily just competing on price alone. Retailers should take this opportunity as a chance to put their best foot forward with a combination of customer experience, product selection, and price.”

“Prime Day is an opportunity for retailers to learn from Amazon on how to execute a smooth smoke test [a preliminary software test], to provide a revenue boost, while also testing their infrastructure to see how well they perform and smooth out any rough edges,” said Boomerang’s Hariharan in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “They should compete with Amazon, but [also] consider this a chance to put their best foot forward with a combination of selection, customer experience and price.”

“Our data suggests that list prices are going away,” said Guru Hariharan, chief executive of Boomerang Commerce, a retail analytics firm. Last spring, Boomerang compiled a list for The New York Times of 100 pet food products that Amazon said it was selling at a discount to a list price. Only about half of them still say that.

“Amazon is a data-driven company with very few sacred cows,” Mr. Hariharan said. “At the very least, it is conducting a storewide test about whether it should change its pricing strategy.”

Costco has its private-label Kirkland brand. Nordstrom has Caslon. And Kohl’s has Sonoma as its billion-dollar in-house brand. Retailers can boost profit margins with private-label goods by controlling the entire value chain from manufacturing to delivery.

Amazon may have a reputation for offering the lowest prices, but it turns out that isn’t always true. It’s another case of buyer beware, even when buying from a trusted source.

A recent pricing study found Amazon to be more expensive on some grocery items than Target and Walmart. The study—by Boomerang Commerce, a company that analyzes and makes price optimization software for merchants—compared prices on a number of grocery products from beverages to breakfast cereal.

Among the key findings were that for the top 100 beverage items listed on Target’s website, the identical items were 97% more expensive, and the top 100 identical breakfast items were 93% more expensive.

Credit Suisse teamed up with e-commerce pricing and analytics firm Boomerang Commerce and found that while Amazon AMZN, +1.07% offers sporting goods merchandise, it doesn’t have the strong edge over Dick’s Sporting Goods DKS, +1.28% that it does over other retailers.

Offer deals on popular items to create a perception of low price, and boost margin on private-label and less sought-after merchandise.

Jet delivers groceries ordered online in 875 ZIP codes in the northeastern U.S.

Company-branded goods can be found readily online. A woman shopping for activewear apparel in mid-April would have seen plenty of private-label options: They represented 84% of the items for sale at JCPenney.com, 57% at Kohls.com and 27% at Macys.com, according to Boomerang Commerce. On that same day, Amazon.com had no private-label products.

Boomerang Commerce, a retail analytics firm, compared the list prices of dozens of pet items on Amazon and the specialist pet site Chewy.com. In only a handful of cases did the retailers even agree on what the list price was. So a 22-pound bag of Blue Buffalo Basics Limited Ingredient Grain-Free Duck and Potato dog food had a list price of $131 on Amazon and $84 on Chewy. Yet the retail price at both sites was the same: $49.49. “A perceived deeper discount creates a higher conversion event — in other words, more buyers,” said Boomerang’s chief executive, Guru Hariharan.

'It's not unimaginable that in a few years… that commodity product purchases will start gravitating toward companies like Amazon, and perhaps Wal-Mart and Target,' said Guru Hariharan, CEO of Boomerang Commerce. [That's] where private label comes in.

Amazon.com Inc. has crushed rivals by offering cut-rate prices on everything from books and electronics to diapers. But to attract fashion brands, it has employed a new strategy: promising full price.

Guru Hariharan, CEO of Boomerang Commerce, says at least two e-retailers of soft-line goods are starting to price products differently based on sizes and colors, or a combination of the two, depending on demand and inventory levels. He says it is “super important” for CEOs and top merchants to understand the “why” and “so what” behind pricing.

Boomerang Commerce has been steadily adding customers over the past year-and-a-half, as well, and now has 9 of the top 50 Internet retailers in its customer base. The company added assortment optimization tools in September 2015. Finally, Boomerang Commerce has recently launched a series of retail analytics reports that compares top retailers like Amazon, Target, Walmart and others in categories like consumer electronics, toys and housewares, with additional reports slated to be released soon.

Sales from Target’s website increased 34 percent last quarter, well above the 8 percent gain reported by Wal-Mart. Target was able to beat Wal-Mart’s website, and in some cases Amazon, on prices in some key categories over the holidays, according to data from Boomerang Commerce.

Despite Wal-Mart’s spending, the company still is falling short of Amazon on price and selection, said Guru Hariharan, chief executive officer of Boomerang Commerce. During the holidays, Amazon was able to beat Walmart.com in key areas like electronics, toys and housewares, and Target Corp. also sold items for cheaper in some categories, he said. And Amazon had a significantly bigger selection than Walmart.com in every category Boomerang tracked.

Experts Share Strategies for “Retail Pricing in the Age of Online Transparency” and Leveling the Playing Field With Amazon

Boomearang Commerce has raised $12 million in Series B funding. Shasta Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers Madrona Venture Group and Trinity Ventures.

Disrupt Battlefield finalist Boomerang Commerce today announced that it has raised a $12 million Series B round led by Shasta Ventures.

Boomerang Commerce Inc. has raised $12 million in Series B funding in a round led by Shasta Ventures.

Despite reports of an inventory glut and aggressive marketing just after Halloween, retailers didn’t budge much on prices over the Thanksgiving-Black Friday-CyberMonday shopping weekend, this research shows. That may account, at least in part, for the fairly muted traffic to stores, which was comparatively light this year. Although much of that was attributed to increased mobile and web traffic, the lack of discounts to be found over the weekend could also have contributed to flatter sales, according to Boomerang.

The online ads and print circulars heralding Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals were loaded with promotions of 40% and 50% off. Heck, some research indicates that the average Black Friday discount at J.C. Penney and Kohl’s was over 66%. Ultimately, though, those figures are misleading...

It’s no wonder so many shoppers were not impressed with some of the big holiday deals being offered by big retailers this past week. Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Jet did not heavily discount most popular products and prices actually increased in key categories after Black Friday, cementing a perception that the two celebrated shopping days are waning in importance, according to research from Boomerang Commerce, which aggregated and analyzed online price discounts and price perception for 1,000 popular products sold by Walmart, Target, Amazon and Jet.

Target Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell has gotten more aggressive with holiday discounts during his second year of a turnaround effort, a strategy that is undercutting some rivals on price while also bringing headaches.

Retail analyst Hitha Herzog and Jonathan Hoenig of Capitalistpig Hedge Fund on Black Friday sales and brick-and-mortar versus online shopping.

There are so many great Black Friday 2015 deals out there but which retailer is consistently offering the best bargains?

E-commerce accounted for $822 million spent in the first 11 hours of Black Friday, and discounts were mounting as online retailers jockeyed for position.

Guru Hariharan, Boomerang Commerce's chief executive officer, discusses the competitive environment in toy retail with Bloomberg's Scarlet Fu on 'Bloomberg Markets.'

Sometimes you have to work harder to compare prices to get the most for your money.

Consumers are increasingly skeptical about whether they're going to find great values on Black Friday, and a new study finds that there's something behind those hunches.

While physical retailers look to upset Amazon’s business model by providing shoppers with something they can’t get online, Amazon is attempting to do the same by giving into what shoppers want most.

Walmart shocked Wall Street on Wednesday when its CFO announced a dour earnings forecast not just for this fiscal year, but the next two.

Jet.com Inc. sells products substantially cheaper than Amazon.com Inc.AMZN -0.34% across a broad range of categories, according to new data, but the overhaul to its business model announced Wednesday could make that harder to sustain.

Our roundup of intriguing new products from companies such as Dell and Talon.

Which top retailer has the lowest prices? Online sellers know how competitive the Amazon.com marketplace is, but they may be wondering how it compares to other sites on pricing and product assortment.

Which top retailer has the lowest prices? Online sellers know how competitive the Amazon marketplace is, but they may be wondering how it compares to other sites on pricing and product assortment.

It might seem like a simple question, but how should retailers decide what they’re going to stock for the highest conversion rate? With a new data-driven software suite, one startup thinks they can find the right answers.

Target Corp. said Wednesday its website will start matching prices from the websites of rivals like Amazon.com and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a significant broadening of its policy as the retailer heads into the competitive holiday shopping season.

Heading into the holiday selling season, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) already has the edge over other retailers when it comes to consumer electronics pricing.

The inaugural Boomerang Commerce Retail Analytics Report looked at 1,200 items in the CE category and found that Best Buy, Jet, Target and Walmart all had higher prices than Amazon.

CEO Marc Lore says he will need 14-15 million customers and $20 billion in revenue to make Jet’s business model profitable. To start Jet on its way, the e-retailer hit the web today with a money-saving pitch, a marketing blitz and prices generally lower than Amazon.com.

Marc Lore buzzes with excitement as he talks about the kind of traffic his new website has already seen on opening day.

Buoyed by strong investor backing, Jet.com officially launched Tuesday with a laser-like pitch of maximizing savings for shoppers.
But is it really cheaper than rival and dominant player Amazon.com?

Jet.com ready to steal back some thunder. Perhaps the first retailer to pose a real threat to the king of e-commerce, analysts, data collectors, retail consultants and just curious shoppers were logging on to Jet.com Tuesday morning to see what the hype was all about.

The e-commerce powerhouse Amazon has spawned a wide range of startups, with its former employees working on everything from cute robots to recruiting software.

With its lower overhead relative to brick-and-mortar rivals, Amazon.com has long enjoyed a reputation as a price leader.

But buzzy e-commerce startup Jet.com — which hasn’t officially launched yet — is hoping to upend that pricing model with an array of discounts on everyday merchandise, including for shorter shipping distances and larger orders.

Boomerang Commerce, a startup that helps online retailers optimize their pricing and a 2014 Disrupt NY Startup Battlefield finalist, today announced the launch of its A/B testing service for pricing.

The next few years are going to be a time of massive growth for online retail, driven by customers’ ability to easily find which store has the lowest price for any given item.

As retailers look to become customer-obsessed in the age of the customer — through personalization 2.0, a single view of the customer, big data processing, and omnichannel engagement — fresh offerings of retail analytics emerge to monitor, measure, and optimize these new industry trends.

Boomerang CEO Guru Hariharan appeared today on National Public Radio's popular Marketplace Weekend news hour. The program included a discussion of how algorithms are being widely used on the Internet, in areas ranging from Uber to dating -- and to more transparent online commerce pricing, which generally works to the advantage of consumers,

To listen to the entire 50-minute NPR Marketplace Weekend program, click on the title above.

MIT Technology Review writes about Boomerang Commerce working with online retailers to help them realize the benefits of dynamic pricing

Democratizing Amazon: Boomerang Commerce raises $8.5M to deliver ecommerce intelligence to the rest of retail

Forbes reports on how Boomerang Commerce is helping other online reporters challenge Amazon using what is arguably the most important attribute of any product – price

Boomerang Commerce Democratizes E-Commerce, says Karan Mehandru, General Partner, Trinity Ventures in his blog announcing series A funding for the dynamic price optimization company"

Wall Street Journal on how Boomerang Commerce is changing the retail landscape with dynamic price optimization - massive scale retail analytics for online retailers

Boomerang Commerce raises series A funding from Madrona Venture Group and Trinity Ventures to expand its engineering team and build more massive scale retail applications.

Dynamic price optimization company Boomerang Commerce, a finalist at TechCrunch’s Disrupt at NY, 2014 announced its series A funding round of $8.5 million

Boomerang can adjust prices on the fly bringing in real-time focus on how the pricing of a particular product fits into the overall business goals of online retailers.

Boomerang Commerce plans to use series A funding to expand its engineering and go-to-market teams