I am going to start a Thread Of The Week series to highlight sellers discussions around Amazon that are worth noting for online retailers interested in or active on Amazon (from various seller boards). Most of the times these exchanges are educational, at times disturbing and on rare occasions even funny (unintentionally). To kick this off I have chosen to start with the latter category and present to you the new socialist Amazon North Korean marketplace. Or so some sellers would have you believe.

Stay with me here.

Amazon Repricers are a not-so-secret class of software that in particular a lot of media sellers are employing to keep their products at the top of the heap, essentially automating price changes that by hand would not be feasible (for merchants with a large product catalog). It’s slowly taking hold in other Amazon categories that are getting more competitive (with the surge in 3P sellers), especially Consumer Electronics.

The result is of course that margins get squeezed across the board with repricers driving all but the largest and/or savviest sellers out of business. In short — the perfect market. Which is of course good for consumers but not so good for micro sellers that are trying to make a living on Amazon.

Resistance may be futile but that doesn’t deter some sellers from fighting the invisible hand of the market and asking to suspend capitalism:

“Everytime you price your book even 1 penny under the lowest selling price you run the risk of setting off the autorepricing programs. These programs are used by many sellers (large and small) to keep their books at the lowest price position. They run automatically, sometimes hourly. When you undercut, you help set off a rapid price spiral down to the bottom costing everyone - including you - money! The best practice is to MATCH the lowest price. You still have the benefit of having the lowest price, and you don’t create further price declines. “

“[...] but I’m finding sellers that are well respected, higher feedback using the repricers to drive down prices - they look desperate for a sale and I think it looks bad - I think to myself, does a penny actually matter? I can’t speak as a buyer anymore becaue I’m jaded as a seller - I will ask friends who comment about buying and I ask this stuff - they tell me that a penny means nothing but then they don’t look at feedback very often either.”

What’s a penny between friends? I think we should just mandate a minimum price for each product and get rid of this competition thing — makes it easier for consumers, too:

“I pray everyday that there would be a minimum of $5 set on every book! buyers would still buy, i know it. But amazon makes too much money with penny books to every do that!”

I encourage every seller to look at Amazon Repricing software to maximize position & margins not unlike Google’s AdWords program. Good repricing software gives you a variety of options ranging from which position you want to be in, product conditions you want to consider (or not), a competitor’s feedback and quantity, time of day and many more aspects of the Amazon product listing. Who would NOT want to be able to use a tool like that?

What are your thoughts on Repricers?

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