Story originally appeared in Business Insider on Dec. 7, 2020. Excerpts from the story below. To see the full story visit BusinessInsider.com.

2. Blue Yonder
URL: https://blueyonder.com/
HQ: Scottsdale, AZ
Total funding: $75 million, according to Crunchbase
Retailers: Petco, L.L. Bean, Walgreens, and Albertsons

The rebranded Blue Yonder, formerly JDA, developed its pricing tools over a decade ago as an AI-driven startup. 

“Blue Yonder uses data to understand how customers are likely to behave and what the impact of price can do to inventory levels,” said Michael Orr, AI solutions director at Blue Yonder, which boasted $61 million in revenue for its SaaS pricing solutions in Q2 2019, an increase of 81% year over year. “This helps retailers avoid the classic conundrum: Price too high and drive customers away, price too low and lose valuable margin.” 

Price elasticity, or the measure of how the marketplace reacts to a price change for a given product, is not static, he pointed out, particularly in the COVID-19 era as customers adjust and shop in different ways. “Consider spiced wine, which clearly varies in demand and price elasticity during the year,” he said. “A 10%-off promotion in summer would produce significantly different behaviors in customers in December than August, and shoppers between cold climate and warm climates.”