Retailing 8th Edition by Patrick Dunne,Robert Lusch, James Carver

Exercise 12

As assistant manager for an online flooring retailer, you have been approached by your manager to develop a competition-based pricing policy. Your manager indicates that, since your market is national and pricing of carpets and hardwoods varies by both product and delivery costs, he would like you to develop a pricing strategy based on what online competitors are charging. Your manager believes that your firm could effectively compete on selection and service if only it could establish a pricing policy that would match or beat competitors, thus eliminating their competitive advantage. In other words, he wants you to gather competitive intelligence from your competitors' websites in order to develop a pricing policy that would, in effect, make your flooring cheaper by 2-3 percent or, at worst, the exact same price (when delivery charges are included) as your competitors. You wonder if this is legal and ethical.
Prepare a response to the manager outlining your position on the potential legal and ethical implications of the strategy.