Dynamic pricing in Brazilian retail: what the reports measure (and what they hide)
Every pricing vendor publishes a report with a rising adoption number. The number becomes a headline at an industry event. What it measures almost never is what the headline suggests.
Most of these reports measure intent and pilots, not captured margin. And most are sponsored by whoever sells the engine. The two facts, together, call for a skeptical read.
What these reports actually measure
The survey question is usually “does your company use or plan to use dynamic pricing”. The answer sums those who tested, those who considered, and those with a stalled pilot. It becomes “70% adopted”, when the honest reading is “70% have declared interest”.
Confusing interest with result is the same error as reading intent as adoption. The report measures the top of the funnel and calls it operational change.
The number behind the number
The data that matters almost never appears: how much margin was actually captured, net of lost traffic. That number is hard to measure, embarrassing when low, and does not sell a license. So it stays out.
McKinsey, in 2026 analysis, places pricing among the largest sources of generative-AI value in retail. The potential is real. The distance between potential and captured is exactly what the sponsored reports do not measure.
The operational distance
Between “we adopted dynamic pricing” and “margin rose without losing the customer” there is a wide gap. It is made of elasticity measured per SKU, a real KVI list, and the cost of executing the change at the shelf.
Skipping that gap is buying the engine and still pricing by eye, now with an expensive license.
This quarter’s decision
The report does not change the year. It changes one question in the next budget meeting: before approving an engine, demand the captured-margin number from a comparable reference, not the adoption percentage.
Think about the pricing report that circulated through your leadership and changed no decision. Almost all of them are like that. That is the one worth translating.
Send me the report that sat on the desk without becoming a decision. In one hour I will send back a one-page brief: three actions for this quarter, each tied to an indicator your operation already measures, like price dispersion across stores or margin by category. If one becomes a project, the two-week Diagnóstico turns the action into scope, with criterion before code.