The whole Amazon repricer software..

[JJWinst]

Whoever invented this type of software needs shooting! I don't see any benefit in it what so ever.

I have a product where my main competitor has started using one of the re-pricers and is under cutting my price by a penny. (We previously both held the same price and would both take 'turns' winning the buy box)

I decided to try re-pricer express to counter act his reprice and now basically every hour the price drops by a penny back and forth!?!?

You can't win! You either don't use the re-pricer and loose sales, or use it and drive the price down until none of you make any money!

How would you suggest solving this?

 

[kulture]

price at 1p above his price. If he has a stupid re-pricer then it will drive the price up. You will still share the buy box.

 

[kulture]

Also consider. you now control his prices. Pick a stock item and let his price plummet on it so he sells out at a reduced margin, then price properly to sell your stock.

 

[JJWinst]

His re-pricer doesn't work up, it just stays 1p cheaper than mine..I can try the latter but I risk bringing the price right down and yes having success while they are out of stock but when they replenish they will sell at the reduced rate.

 

[JamesSco]

Amazon's buy box does not work on the lowest price. It will still give you the buybox so long as you are within 1.5% of the lowest price seller.

Set your software as a percentage as opposed to a penny. We set our repricer to be exactly 1.5% above the lowest price. This gives us BuyBox 50% of the time.

 

[ECS]

JamesSco: Interesting about the BuyBox. We're fairly new so don't yet qualify for the BuyBox. Nonetheless we get sales as for products we are the cheapest.

I just assumed that everybody automatically clicks on the price to see all sellers, and then picks the combination of price/seller that appeals to them.

Is your experience then that a lot of buyers simply buy from the BuyBox ?

 

[Pish_Pash]

Is your experience then that a lot of buyers simply buy from the BuyBox ?

If you don't win the buy box, then your Amazon sales aren't going to that great. Basically winning the buy box is everything when selling on Amazon!

 

[JamesSco]

JamesSco: Interesting about the BuyBox. We're fairly new so don't yet qualify for the BuyBox. Nonetheless we get sales as for products we are the cheapest.

I just assumed that everybody automatically clicks on the price to see all sellers, and then picks the combination of price/seller that appeals to them.

Is your experience then that a lot of buyers simply buy from the BuyBox ?

As Pish_Pash states, winning the buy box is everything on Amazon. Unless of course the specific listing you are purchasing from has no buy box sellers at all then it will be down to the price.

 

[ECS]

Still really surprised about the 'winning the BuyBox is everything'.

My experience seems to show that its the lowest priced seller that gets the sale, regardless of BuyBox, because as I said we don't qualify for the Box yet but, get high sales for items where we're the cheapest out of say 10 other sellers including Amazon.

Will be interesting to see then whether we start getting sales on some of our other items then for which we're not the lowest, when we do start getting BuyBoxes.

 

[JJWinst]

ECS - I'm guessing Amazon has the 'buy box' ? If so you can sometimes get sellers checking the lower price if Amazon aren't already (which isn't that often)

From my experience if you don't have the buy box or share it with someone, you won't sell anything.

 

[junipaire2009]

How would one go about getting the buy box then, how is it worked out who would get it.

 

[RepricerExpress]

To answer JJWinst (hope you like our software!), it's important to ensure that all the factors Amazon values in its determination of who wins the Buy Box are addressed in your business, with pricing being only one of them. Repricing software will allow you to try various strategies to see what's the most profitable for you, and with so many different sellers with varying feedbacks, varying levels of stock etc. there is more than enough room to determine your own sweet-spot.

Exactly how the Buy Box is worked out is Amazon's secret, which it's not going to share, however, when you look at it from their point of view, they want the customer to have the best possible experience when purchasing on the site, and so will favour Featured Merchants, FBA sellers (they know delivery is going to be sweet) and those generally with low negative feedback, good stock availability etc. More info here on our site if you would like to read about it in more detail.

Regarding repricing in general, you don't have to be the cheapest seller to win, and in many cases pricing above the lowest seller (1.5% as JamseSco mentions) will often put you in the Buy Box, and bear in mind that Amazon rotates sellers in the Buy Box.

 

[JJWinst]

Hi Repricer - Your software is great..If you are the only one using it. However if there are 2 people using re-pricers then it's a race to the bottom. You are correct in saying that numerous reasons determine the Buy Box. But more often than not, price and FBA is king.

 

[silvermusic]

As a fairly regular buyer on Amazon marketplace I can say hand on heart I never use the buy box, I'll always take a look at all the sellers of a given item. Price isn't everything, being UK based and sent from the UK is for me the number one thing I look for, then feedback/price, if one seller has much better feedback that's worth paying a little extra for. Price isn't always the number one consideration for me, as for others... well much as I'd like to think so I don't think I'm unique in my buying habits.

 

[JamesSco]

As a fairly regular buyer on Amazon marketplace I can say hand on heart I never use the buy box, I'll always take a look at all the sellers of a given item. Price isn't everything, being UK based and sent from the UK is for me the number one thing I look for, then feedback/price, if one seller has much better feedback that's worth paying a little extra for. Price isn't always the number one consideration for me, as for others... well much as I'd like to think so I don't think I'm unique in my buying habits.

The feedback system on Amazon is somewhat useless, as a seller we very rarely review this now a days as there is not much we can take from it in terms of how we are doing.

We only get feedback for around 4% of orders, no one really bothers taking time to leave the feedback unless something goes wrong. In which case they always manage to leave us a nice note. 3/4 of months back I notice a nice Negative message from one of our customers, having looked at it, it was her 28th order, no feedback for any of the previous orders but the latest one went missing in transit.

 

[RepricerExpress]

Very interesting. We get many sellers simply aiming to be around the Buy Box price so they'll be listed on the first page of search results for an item, which in all honesty makes a lot of sense. Like Silvermusic, I rarely buy directly from the Buy Box until I've had a look at a few of the offers on the first page of results. Depending on the item and what it's for, my decision could be based on quick delivery or a sellers' history—price is really important but it's still only one piece of the puzzle.

 

[JJWinst]

The feedback system on Amazon is somewhat useless, as a seller we very rarely review this now a days as there is not much we can take from it in terms of how we are doing.

We only get feedback for around 4% of orders, no one really bothers taking time to leave the feedback unless something goes wrong. In which case they always manage to leave us a nice note. 3/4 of months back I notice a nice Negative message from one of our customers, having looked at it, it was her 28th order, no feedback for any of the previous orders but the latest one went missing in transit.

This is the exact reason I don't want to open up a new account to be on the new platform as we only receive around 18 feedback a month, yet process over 500 orders!