Gaming mice: a price rise hurts most at the top
I measured 3,268 price changes across 299 gaming mice and compared each one against the products that held their price. A 10 percent cut improved the sales rank by about 11 percent within two weeks, while a 10 percent increase cost about 7 percent. Above €40 an increase cost clearly more than below. This is report 3 of twelve in this quarter's consumer electronics series.
In short
- A cut moves the rank about one for one. A 10 percent cut improved the rank by about 11 percent (range 9 to 13) within two weeks.
- Raising the price costs less than cutting gains. A 10 percent increase cost about 7 percent of rank (range 6 to 9). The two ranges do not overlap.
- Above €40, a price rise hurts the most. Premium mice lost about 11 percent of rank per 10 percent increase (range 8 to 14). Below €24 it was about 6 percent, between €24 and €40 about 4 percent.
- Every deeper cut bought more. A cut of 5 to 15 percent improved the rank by 12 percent, 15 to 25 percent by 25 percent, more than 25 percent by 41 percent. All three steps are clearly apart.
- Competitors barely react. After a cut, other sellers changed their prices only about 5 percent more often than usual.
Price cuts
A 10% cut improved rank by roughly 9 to 13 percent.
Price increases
A 10% increase cost roughly 6 to 9 percent of rank.
At the top, a price rise costs the most
Premium mice, from €40 up, lost about as much rank as they raised the price. Their range runs from 0.84 to 1.41 and sits clear of both cheaper groups, so this difference holds up in the data.
Below €40 an increase cost less. Budget and mid overlap, so I cannot rank those two.
Cuts tell a different story. All three groups gained about one for one, and their ranges overlap. A cut worked at every price level.
The full picture
01 · Does discount depth matter?
Yes. Every deeper cut bought clearly more rank.
Each step deeper bought more rank
A cut of 5 to 15 percent improved the rank by 12 percent, 15 to 25 percent by 25 percent and more than 25 percent by 41 percent. Each step is clearly apart from the next.
Rises of 5 to 15 percent and 15 to 25 percent cost 9 and 12 percent of rank and overlap. A rise of more than 25 percent cost 35 percent, clearly more.
02 · Will competitors follow?
Hardly more than they move on any other day.
Prices move all the time, a cut adds little
I looked at 3,347 cuts on 324 products. Within 14 days, some competitor changed a price after 98 percent of them. Against a normal two-week window, competitors moved only about 5 percent more often after a cut.
After an increase it was about 7 percent more. 68 percent of first moves fell on the same day as the trigger, which I cannot read as a reaction.
03 · Where can a new product get in?
Nowhere I can show on solid evidence.
Few newcomers, and fewer still to judge
No corridor: no price band in this category met the entry criteria, so none is marked recommended.
In the last 24 months, 59 new products entered this shelf. 9 of them now rank in the top third, and 1 have left again.
The strongest band in my scoring is €51.68 to €63.18, where two of three judged newcomers reached the top third. Three newcomers are too few to recommend a band. Across the whole shelf I could judge only 13 newcomers, and only one newcomer left again.
04 · What does the shelf look like?
Most mice cost less than €35, and the shelf barely turns over.
Of the 347 products I could place on the price map, 140 sit in the three cheapest bands, up to €28.29. 38 sit in the four most expensive bands, from €77.23.
The typical product in a band has between 47 and 462 reviews. A typical price held for 32 to 183 days, depending on the band.
Data appendix
I started from a list of 3,060 listings on amazon.de. I removed 1,578 listings that were not gaming mice, such as mouse pads, keyboards, sets with keyboards, controllers and grip tapes. I also removed 9 multipacks and sets, 10 lines for children, 223 listings outside €15 to €200 and 318 listings with fewer than 20 reviews. To keep single brands from dominating, I kept at most three products per brand, which removed 510. Of the remaining 412 listings, 248 were variation groups that cannot be bought themselves. I replaced each with one sellable variant, the one with the longest price history, and checked the variants against the same rules. That gave 381 products. After the price history came in, I removed 14 whose typical price fell outside €15 to €200, which left 367. Of these, 19 never showed a price on amazon.de, so they add nothing to the figures.
I compare each product only against products in the same Amazon categories. Amazon files this product type in two parallel branches, "Gaming-Mäuse" and "Mäuse", and I accept both. That is stricter than title keywords, because many office mice call themselves "gaming" in their title. 20 products sat outside these categories, and their 241 price changes were left out. The product list is available on request for methodological review.
| Step | Events | Removed because |
|---|---|---|
| Price changes found | 6,898 | n/a |
| Gaps in the price history | −247 | the price history had holes around the change |
| Too little ranking data | −1,035 | the rank was missing on too many days |
| Overlapping price change | −1,241 | another price change fell inside the measuring window |
| Deal or coupon markers | 0 | a deal or coupon ran at the same time |
| Stockout signals | −457 | the product looked out of stock |
| Burst of new reviews | −598 | reviews jumped at the same time |
| Listing too young | −198 | the listing was less than 60 days old |
| Too few control products | −218 | fewer than 5 comparable products held their price |
| Passed every check | 3,952 | one event can fail several checks |
| Used for the figures | 3,268 | minus 486 with a trend already running before the change and 241 from products outside the category, 43 of them counted in both |
price change ≥ 5% and ≥ €0.30, held ≥ 7 days · comparison: 14 days before, days 3 to 14 after · control products: same category, price moved less than 2%, at least 5 of them · rank coverage ≥ 70% of days · listing older than 60 days · review burst = more than 10% and at least 15 new reviews · ranges are 90%, from a bootstrap clustered by product · study protocol v1.1
The price changes I found range from −70 percent to +213 percent. Moves that large are rare. They do not drive the figures, which come from the dense middle. 78 percent of the used changes were cuts or increases of up to 25 percent.
Limits
- LIMITS: I measure the ranking, not units sold, and only over two weeks after a change. Every figure holds only for the price moves sellers actually made in this category. The price groups are thirds of this set, so "premium" means €39.85 to €172.44 here. Competitor reactions are counted as any price change by another product in the category, which says nothing about intent. The entry view looks back 24 months and judges newcomers only once they have been listed long enough.
- 367 products
- 6,898 price changes found
- 3,952 passed every check
- 3,268 used for the figures
- 299 products in the fit set
- ref f49f2222
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