How can investors measure whether a consumer brand has pricing power before it reports?

• Matched-SKU prices rising faster than the category, so the brand is raising prices on the same products.
• Markdown breadth flat or falling versus the same weeks last year, so the increase is not being discounted away.
• Full-price availability holding up, so products still sell out at the new price.
• Consistency across channels, so wholesale partners are not discounting what the brand's own site holds.

1. 1Resolve the company to all of its brands and select the brands that matter for revenue.
2. 2Pull weekly matched-SKU price changes by brand and category, normalized per unit where pack sizes vary.
3. 3Overlay markdown breadth and discount depth for the same weeks last year to remove seasonality.
4. 4Split the brand's own site from wholesale retailers to see who is carrying the discounting.
5. 5Compare against peers in the same categories to separate brand strength from category-wide inflation.

Fundamental analysts use it to test management commentary on pricing and promotions between reporting dates. Quantitative teams use the same series as inputs to gross-margin and revenue-per-unit models.

• Matched-SKU inflation: The price change of identical products observed in both periods, which isolates true price moves from changes in product mix.
• Markdown breadth: The share of a brand's or retailer's live products that are selling below their full price at a point in time.
• Discount depth: The average percentage reduction from full price across products that are on sale.
• Full-price availability: The share of a brand's products that are both in stock and selling at full price, a proxy for clean, healthy demand.
• DTC vs wholesale mix: How a brand's online assortment and pricing split between its own direct-to-consumer site and its wholesale retail partners.

How each measure is built: methodology.