MediaMarkt Data Scraping Services

Two banners in one group is a dimension, not a footnote

MediaMarktSaturn runs both banners in several markets, often with overlapping catchments. The same product can carry different prices, different promotions and different stock at the two fascias in one city.

• For a brand, this is two retail relationships that happen to share an owner, and price integrity has to be assessed at each.
• For a competitor, the gap between banners is a live signal about how the group is positioning them.
• For a price index, blending them produces a series that moves with banner mix rather than with pricing.

banner is mandatory on every record. Where a client wants a group-level view we aggregate to it, but the underlying rows stay per banner so the aggregation is inspectable and the banner gap is never lost.

Country is a separate price surface again

Both banners trade across multiple European countries with different currencies, VAT rates and promotional calendars. The same model routinely differs in price between Germany, Spain and Poland.

Every record carries country, the price in local currency and the VAT basis as displayed. In European electronics, displayed prices are gross of local VAT at local rates, so a raw cross-country comparison is invalid before normalisation and we do not perform that normalisation silently.

Where a converted or net-of-VAT view is needed, the rate used is supplied as its own field. Baking it in is how a cross-market comparison ends up measuring tax policy.

Store pickup is the competitive edge, so it needs measuring

A large store estate is the group's structural advantage over pure-play electronics retailers, and that shows up as pickup availability rather than as price.

We capture pickup_available and the stated pickup window per store, kept separate from delivery availability and its window. A product deliverable next week but collectable this afternoon is a materially different proposition, and a single in-stock flag makes them identical.

Pickup availability also differs between the two banners' stores in the same city, which is one of the more practical uses of banner as a dimension.

The EU energy label is a published, comparable attribute

EU rules require energy-efficiency labelling and a product information sheet for large appliances, televisions, lighting and several other categories, with a registered entry in the EU product database. That makes energy class one of very few technical attributes that is standardised, published and directly comparable across retailers and countries.

• It is a real purchase driver in European appliance retail, and it moves independently of price.
• It is standardised, unlike marketing specification text, so it can be compared without normalisation guesswork.
• A rescaled class matters commercially. Two products can carry the same letter under different scale versions and not be equivalent, so the scale version has to travel with the value.

We capture energy_class, the scale version where indicated and the product-information-sheet reference where published. For appliance categories this frequently explains a price gap that a specification-free dataset presents as an unexplained anomaly.

A shared currency makes intra-market gaps unusually visible

Across the eurozone markets the group trades in, prices are quoted in the same currency. There is no exchange rate hiding a cross-border difference.

That makes intra-eurozone price gaps directly readable in a way they are not for a retailer spanning several currencies, and it makes them commercially sensitive: a visible, unexplained gap between two euro markets invites cross-border sourcing and grey-market flow on high-value items.

Because the comparison needs no FX step, the only remaining normalisation is VAT, which differs by country and is captured as a basis on every record. Where a net-of-VAT view is wanted the rate is supplied separately, so a euro-to-euro comparison can be made either gross or net and the choice stated.

For non-eurozone markets in the estate, currency is on every record and no conversion is performed silently.

Marketplace sellers sit alongside own stock

Both banners operate marketplace layers, so some offers on a product page come from third-party sellers rather than from the retailer.

The retailer's own price reflects its buying and trading decision, which is what a supplier negotiates against. A marketplace seller's price is an independent third party's decision, and for a brand that is a channel-integrity question rather than a wholesale one.

We capture seller_type and the seller name where displayed, plus which offer held the default position. Where the page gives no indication, the field is recorded as unknown rather than assumed to be the retailer.