A brand that benchmarks its price against competitors in Japan or Singapore can end up comparing numbers that are not on the same footing. Both markets require prices shown to consumers to include tax. Japan’s National Tax Agency states that the duty applies to any price a business displays to consumers in advance, whatever the medium. Singapore’s tax authority confirms that since 1 January 2024 every price display must include GST at 9%.
Japan’s Ministry of Finance explains why the rule exists: when some sellers show prices before tax and others after, shoppers cannot easily compare. That same problem can reappear inside a brand’s own benchmark sheet. Competitor prices read off the shelf are tax-inclusive. A price list held by the brand, its distributor or an external researcher may not be. Placed side by side, the two can look aligned, or can show a gap that is partly a tax artefact.
The first thing that goes wrong is a misread position. The brand believes it sits at parity with a leading competitor, or carries a premium of a certain size, when part of the difference is how two columns of figures were treated. The second consequence is larger than most executives expect. Pricing conversations with distributors and retailers tend to start from the benchmark. If the benchmark is corrected later, those discussions reopen, targets set on the old gap lose their basis, and the time already spent is gone. The people who notice first are usually the retail partners, who see the shelf price every day, not the team that built the sheet.
The question is not simply whether the brand has collected enough competitor prices. It is whether every one of them describes the same thing, in the same market, in the way a shopper meets it. If the measured gap shifted by the size of a tax rate, would the brand’s current position still hold?
To understand how to build a price comparison that holds up across competitors and markets, refer to
Framework 12: Price Research Analysis