Zones Mean Dollars in an Omnichannel World

While many analysts and retail pundits predicted that e-commerce would be the death knell for zone pricing, leading to the establishment of a national online price, quite the opposite is true. To paraphrase Mark Twain, "reports of the death of zone pricing have been greatly exaggerated." E-commerce sales continue to increase year-over-year, yet many successful retailers continue to rely on zone pricing as a pillar of their pricing strategy. In Retail Systems Research's 2014 Pricing Benchmark study, for example, only 15 percent of retail winners said that online shopping had compromised their zone pricing plans.