Just log on to the Internet, and browse their online catalog. Never has retail competition been so fierce, and never has business-intelligence data been so accessible. Online catalogs are a mother lode of your competition's pricing and inventory data, and it's in a machine-readable form. But getting at the data in online catalogs in a consistent way isn't always easy.
Online catalogs are often vast and have relatively complex layouts.
Automating this gathering effort is a necessity, and various software applications are emerging that make it fairly straightforward. This category of products and services is still quite young.