Bands and tiers

A product is compared only with products of its own format, and its price is read against that format's price ranges. Three words carry this: bucket, band, tier.

Buckets

A bucket is a product's format: family, form and size. Flower 3.5g, Edible 100mg, Infused pre-roll 1g, Vape cart 1g. It is worked out from the product, not chosen from a fixed list. An eighth is only ever compared with other eighths.

Bands

A band is a named price range inside a bucket: Value, Mid or Premium. A bucket has one, two or three, depending on how many price clusters its sales really contain. Every price lands in some band, and each band also records the narrower range where the shelf position actually sits.

Bands come from the last 180 days of your own sales. A price point is a rung when it carries at least 5% of the bucket's units and 3 products; rungs within 15% of each other form a cluster; each cluster is a band, split from the next at the midpoint of the trough between them. A bucket is refused when nothing is in stock, under 100 units sold, or under 5 products.

Market rungs and starter values

Where your own sales refused, competitor shelves can supply the rungs: at least 2 fresh stores and 5 listings, labelled "Market rung - N shops". Where neither exists, hand-written starter values stand in ("on starter values" on Setup).

Tiers

A price tier is which band a product's current price falls in. A merit tier is where the product ranks within its bucket by merit: the top 20% Premium, the bottom 30% Value, the rest Mid, once the bucket has at least 10 products and 10 distinct scores. The two tiers disagreeing is a merit gap.

A merit tier a bucket has no band named for is placed on the ladder by position rather than by word, weighted by each band's share of the volume - so Mid merit in a Value/Premium bucket is compared against whichever of the two rungs its ranking falls on.

Above the shelf

Because every price has to land somewhere, the dearest band also catches prices well above where it traded. Beyond 15% above that band's observed range - the same distance that made two price points one rung - there is no shelf position to compare with, so no target is stated. A $50 eighth on a shelf whose dearest observed price is $18 is the case: your own sales say nothing about $50. Cost, competitor prices and headroom still speak for those products; the bands do not.

Accepting a run

Derivation runs on Sunday mornings. A run governs nothing until a person accepts it on Setup or Price bands, and accepting is the only switch that turns recommendations on.

Unclassified

A sale whose price lands in no band is unclassified. It happens when a live bucket has neither derived bands nor starter values; a daily check reports it. A refusal is recorded, not hidden.

Where you see this

Price bands, Setup, Merit gaps, Product pricing.