How Grupo Ramos Is Using AI to Win the Pricing Marathon

For a retailer operating 91 stores across the Dominican Republic, with plans to surpass 300 by 2030, pricing is not a back-office function. It is a daily competitive battleground. In a recent webinar, leaders from Grupo Ramos, the largest retailer in the Dominican Republic, joined Revionics to share how they are transforming their pricing strategy with artificial intelligence. The conversation was candid, practical and full of insights for any retailer navigating today's volatile market conditions.

The Pressure Is Real and Growing

Grupo Ramos operates in one of Latin America's most price-sensitive retail environments. With an economy highly dependent on imports, every shift in global commodity prices, energy costs or transportation rates lands directly on the shelf. Herbert Torres, VP Commercial at Grupo Ramos, described the challenge plainly: Managing prices manually was simply no longer an option.

"Customers are comparing all the time, customers are reacting faster and customers keep demanding better value for their purchasing decisions. Managing prices in a purely manual way is simply not scalable. It had us backed against a wall in terms of the speed and agility we need," Herbert said.

At the same time, passing costs on to customers is not as straightforward as it once was. Shoppers in developing economies are acutely sensitive to price changes on staple products, and they will quickly turn to substitutes or competitors. The answer, Herbert explained, is precision. AI allows Grupo Ramos to anticipate cost changes, model scenarios and simulate the impact of price moves at the SKU level, before any change reaches the shelf.

From Manual Complexity to Centralized Strategy

Before Grupo Ramos implemented Revionics technology, its pricing process involved various internal departments, external suppliers and multiple validation layers. Decisions were slow, inconsistent and difficult to scale. Jennifer Mejia, Pricing Manager at Grupo Ramos, described the "before" picture:

"Scaling those pricing decisions was somewhat inconsistent, and the speed at which we could make them was even slower than what the market or the business required."

Grupo Ramos' pricing transformation was comprehensive. It touched technology, processes, data quality and culture. Today, much of that work has been consolidated into a single specialized team. The results extend well beyond efficiency.

Jennifer added: "This has allowed the commercial teams to dedicate the time they used to spend on pricing decisions to more strategic decisions. We went from having an execution-focused team to having a more strategic team working with analytical data."

Pricing Across Three Formats and Thousands of SKUs

One of the most complex dimensions of Grupo Ramos' implementation is the sheer variety of their business. They operate hypermarkets, supermarkets and discount stores, each serving customers with different shopping missions and price expectations. A one-size-fits-all pricing strategy would not work.

With Revionics, the team was able to define differentiated strategies by format, ensuring that prices were always aligned with what each customer segment expected. As Jennifer explained, the phased rollout — rolling out categories progressively rather than all at once — meant customers never felt the change.

"Doing it in a phased way meant the customer didn't notice price increases or decreases, didn't feel the impact of implementing an intelligent pricing tool," she said.

The implementation now spans grocery food, grocery nonfood and fresh food across all impacted stores. Fresh food alone, with its day-to-day agricultural variability, presented a significant challenge, and the team navigated it successfully by leaning on strong collaboration across commercial teams, the pricing group, technology and store operations.

Real Results: Better Balance, Stronger Business

Since going live with Revionics approximately a year and a half ago, Grupo Ramos has seen results that are tangible. The team can now access metrics that were previously unavailable — including elasticity modeling, margin analysis and competitive market data — and act on them in near real time.

"The adoption of change, the customer sentiment, understanding how customers respond to different pricing decisions across different categories — that allows us to act precisely in the market," said Jennifer. "We've seen improvements in key business indicators, achieving a better balance between profitability and price perception, which confirms that having a good strategy and a good tool like Revionics for pricing decisions is truly vital for our business."

When she was asked directly whether the ROI had been measured, Jennifer's answer was unequivocal: "Absolutely yes. And the results have been positive."

What It Takes to Get There: Advice from the Field

The Grupo Ramos team was generous with their advice for other retailers considering a similar journey. Three clear themes emerged.

1. This is a business transformation, not a technology project.

Herbert was emphatic on this point: "Don't see this as a technology project. This is a transformation of how the pricing area of the business is managed." The leadership of Grupo Ramos' pricing initiative came from the commercial side, not IT, a deliberate choice that reflects how deeply this work touches strategy, culture and customer experience. Jennifer reinforced the point: "This is not just a technology tool implementation. It implies a comprehensive transformation in the organization and in how you do business, in decision-making, and in aligning pricing while taking care of your customers."

2. Choose a partner, not a vendor.

Herbert offered a key piece of advice for anyone selecting an AI pricing partner: "When you choose a partner, one of the key recommendations would be to make sure you are choosing someone for today, for the day after tomorrow and for the future — someone who can grow with you in the technology and tools you need, not just for today's or yesterday's needs, but for what's coming in five, six or 10 years."

JJ Thorne, VP Customer Success at Revionics, echoed this from the vendor side: "The best implementations we've had have not been transactional relationships but true partnerships. And when there is transparency, continuous feedback, strategic alignment and commitment on both sides, the results accelerate significantly."

3. Don't wait for perfect data.

Data cleansing is often cited as a barrier to getting started. JJ's advice cuts through that hesitation: Focus first on the data that truly drives pricing decisions, build governance around it as an ongoing discipline and start generating value without waiting for perfection. The tool itself can help identify inconsistencies and errors over time.

The Marathon Has Just Begun

Herbert described the competitive landscape in the Dominican Republic with a memorable analogy: This is a long-distance marathon. Grupo Ramos started first, and they are not slowing down. Next on the agenda is promotional pricing and clearance pricing, adding new layers of precision and profitability to what is already a sophisticated operation.

For retailers across Latin America and beyond, the Grupo Ramos story is both a roadmap and a reminder. The pricing pressures shaping markets today — including inflation, global cost volatility and hyperaware consumers — are not temporary. The retailers that build the capability to navigate them intelligently, strategically and at scale will be the ones that lead.

The race is on. The question is whether you are in it.

Ready to hear the full conversation? Watch the on-demand recording and get the complete story from the Grupo Ramos team.