IBM is using its cloud to check out rivals pricing and offer you recommendations about what to charge.

The "dynamic pricing" cloud service will keep you up to date with competitor price changes and provide information about whether users are cancelling their shopping cart before they checkout.

The idea behind this is that retailers will be able to identify market demand, social sentiment, competitor prices, financial goals and a whole raft of other pieces of information.

In theory it will help retailers to navigate online price wars and will help them to intelligently adjust pricing; all while driving customer loyalty and product demand, the company said.

The intelligent part of IBM Dynamic Pricing is that retailers will be able to determine what changes they should respond to and which should be ignored. "When taking action is appropriate, the solution automatically makes real-time pricing recommendations," the company said.

An example given by the company is that a retailer might find that a competitor rolled out a promotion on a key product that reduces the prices by 15%, the service would evaluate this and then make a decision based on a number of factors.

These would include; product availability, price sensitivity and customer demand, that an 8% pricing change would keep the retailer competitive but also help to achieve sales and margin objectives.

Once this is decided the price would be automatically updated online.

An additional feature gives retailers data and insights from their physical stores to influence and price online.