Price Perception

The Price Perception page answers the question “are customers perceiving us as cheap or expensive?” It does this through your Key Value Items, or KVIs. KVIs are the high-frequency, high-visibility products that shoppers use as mental anchors to judge your entire catalogue. Price changes on KVIs have an outsized effect on how shoppers perceive your store. The page models that perception and lets you simulate what happens if you adjust those prices.

The indices on the page are illustrative models, not a live measurement of your market position. They start from fixed baseline values and move only when you change prices in the Simulation Lab. No competitor or market price data goes into them.

Setting up your KVI basket

The first time you open Price Perception, the page is empty. No data appears until you choose which products make up your KVI basket. Click Suggest KVIs with AI. The system analyses your catalogue, ranks products by how widely each one is listed across the market, and nominates 5 to 10 candidates.

A selection table then lists each AI-suggested product with its brand, category, and estimated listing volume. All suggestions start checked. Untick any product you want to exclude, or use the header checkbox to select or deselect all products at once. When you are satisfied with the set, click Save & Continue to save your basket and open the dashboard. The button is disabled while no product is ticked.

Aperture saves your KVI selection per user. A change to your selection does not affect other team members.

Dashboard tab

The dashboard shows your KVI basket and the modelled indices. Both indices sit at their baseline values until you adjust prices in the Simulation Lab.

Summary metrics

Three cards appear at the top of the page:

Metric	What it means
Perception Index	A weighted index where 100 equals market parity. A value below 100 means customers perceive you as cheaper than the market. A value above 100 means more expensive. The index starts from a fixed baseline of 96.5 and reflects the price changes you simulate. Those changes carry double weight because high-frequency items strongly influence shopper judgement.
Actual Price Index	A fixed baseline of 98.2 plus the average percentage change of your simulated KVI prices, weighted by listing volume. It does not apply the extra KVI perception multiplier that the Perception Index uses.
Perception Gap	The difference between the Actual Price Index and the Perception Index. A positive gap, where the actual index is higher than the perception index, is “marketing efficiency”. Customers think you are cheaper than you are.

7-Day Index Trend

An area chart plots the Perception Index and the Actual Price Index across a simulated Mon to Sun arc. The arc converges to your current index values. The chart is a conceptual illustration, not a chart of historical recorded data. It shows how consumer perception tends to lag behind real price moves, because shoppers update their mental models more slowly than prices change.

KVI Tracker

A list of every product in your basket. Each row shows the item’s current price, its market listing count, and its Impact percentage. Impact is proportional to the product’s listing volume across the market. Shoppers see a product stocked by more retailers more often, so that product pulls the Perception Index harder.

Category Impact

A bar chart that shows how much each product category contributes to your overall Perception Index. The chart shows up to four categories. Each bar aggregates the weights of your KVIs in that category.

Perception Strategy

Two insights derived from how your KVI prices sit relative to market baselines:

Current Action. Reads your top-weighted KVI and states whether you lead with aggressive “hero” pricing, match the market, or price for margin. A price at least 2 % below baseline reads as hero pricing, at least 2 % above as margin focus, and anything in between as matching the market.
Opportunity. Flags the highest risk item, or suggests that you reinforce a secondary KVI to build a stronger value reputation. If any product is more than 2 % above baseline, the insight highlights that product as a perception risk.

Hover over the information icon on each insight to read the pricing principle behind the recommendation.

Simulation Lab tab

The Simulation Lab lets you experiment with price changes before you commit to anything. The Simulation Lab never modifies live catalogue prices.

Live Price Adjuster

Each KVI in your basket appears as a card with a price slider and a numeric input. The slider ranges from 50 % to 150 % of the current market price, which is a change of up to -50 % or +50 % of that price. When you move the slider or edit the number, the page instantly recalculates the Perception Index and the other summary metrics at the top of the page. The Projected Perception card on the right updates in real time.

The Projected Perception card also shows:

Sentiment. A qualitative label derived from where the index lands. The label is Aggressive (below 95), Fair (95 to below 100), or Premium (100 or above).
Delta. The percentage difference from market parity, which is 100.
Basket Value. The weighted average price movement across all your KVIs.

If one KVI carries significantly more weight than the others, a notice in the Projected Perception card calls out the impact multiplier. For example, “adjusting Brand X has 4× more impact on the index than Brand Y”.

To undo your changes and revert all sliders to the original market prices, click the Reset icon next to the Live Price Adjuster header.

AI Optimize

Click AI Optimize in the Live Price Adjuster header to open the Optimization Objective dialog. Choose a pricing strategy:

Strategy	Effect
Aggressive	Deep KVI discounts to win perception at the cost of margin.
Balanced	Competitive pricing while protecting some margin.
Premium	Maximise margin while staying within “fair” perception limits.

Click Generate Recommendations. AI returns a table with the current price, the recommended price, and the percentage change for each KVI. The dialog also shows a Predicted Outcome, an estimated improvement to the Perception Index in points, with a note that average margins are maintained. The AI is instructed to favour psychological price endings, such as .99 and .95, but the endings are not guaranteed.

Click Apply Recommendations to load the suggested prices into the simulator sliders. You can then review them interactively before you decide whether to adopt them. Clicking Apply does not push any prices to your catalogue.

Insights

A static reference card in the Simulation Lab explains the three psychological principles behind the index:

Frequency Bias. Customers memorise the prices of high-frequency items, such as milk or pods, and use them to judge your entire catalogue.
Anchor Effect. If a key item is priced even $1 above a competitor’s price, shoppers often assume all your items are higher.
Marketing Efficiency. Targeted discounts on your top 10 KVIs are up to 5× more effective for perception than broad catalogue discounts.

Managing your KVI basket via chat

The AI Assistant (Chat) can read and update your KVI selection without leaving the page:

Ask “what products are in my price perception basket?” to see your current KVIs.
Ask “suggest KVIs for me” to list AI candidates in the chat. Suggesting saves nothing.
Ask “update my KVI selection to these products: …” and the assistant replaces your basket, then confirms the new set by name. The assistant does not ask for confirmation first. After a change, an undo option restores your previous basket when you had one. There is no undo if your basket was empty before. To clear your basket, ask the assistant to empty the selection.
Ask “optimise my KVI prices for a balanced strategy” to receive price recommendations narrated in the chat. No live prices change.