Before starting any business venture, one of the most common pieces of advice is to do your research. There will always be a learning curve when entering into unknown territory, but the more you can learn about beforehand, the better able you’ll be to anticipate situations and deal with surprises. Because repricing tends to be a fairly solitary activity, with merchants gathering their data from competitors to perform their actions, it’s important to understand just why the practice is so vital. And to do that, you need to go into your buyers’ minds and learn why they’re so fond of competitive pricing.
What Drives Consumers When Shopping?
In economics, there are two basic push-and-pull forces that set the market into action: supply, and demand. When you’ve got more products than consumers want, that drives your prices down; the opposite occurs when the public can’t get enough of a certain thing (e.g. Tickle-Me-Elmo, Beanie Babies).
When you’re dealing with a market that’s heavier on demand, you’ve just been dealt all aces. Unfortunately, that situation doesn’t crop up very often — especially if you’re selling on Amazon and facing stiff competition — so you’ve got to come up with plans to deal with the subtleties.
When dealing with a market that’s more focused on supply (aka a buyer’s market), then the landscape can be further subdivided like this:
- Price: How do your prices rank against your competitors? Are they lower, higher, or roughly along the same line?
- Quality: Your buyers just won’t shop from you, no matter how amazing your prices, if the stuff you’re selling won’t hold up. If the products in your inventory fall more along the lines of one-and-done, then you need to address that.
How Offline Warehouses Compare to Amazon
One of the great things about Amazon is it has very little overhead costs, whether talking about Amazon the corporation or Amazon the collection of merchants. Because everything’s sold online, that removes the need for brick-and-mortar stores, with Amazon warehouses being the exception.
Your shoppers may or may not be aware of this, and they may or may not even care. That doesn’t matter as much as knowing what they’re looking for when they shop, and that’s getting the best all-around deal.
Warehouses like Costco typically offer fantastic deals (although not always), which is why consumers typically give them a really hard, long second look. The main mantra that surrounds warehouses is “buy in bulk and save”, and that’s generally true (the list of exceptions would be longer than a simple sentence).
However, as the above Wall Street Journal article pointed out, great savings aren’t always to be had at warehouses. If you’re buying and using everything on your list in bulk, then yes, warehouses can be a good place to look. But although having 20 tins of tuna in your shelf or 10 pounds of linguini in your cupboard can get tiresome after a while, buyers still can’t resist the idea of saving money. Keep this in mind when choosing the language on your profiles, and be aware that your Amazon page may not be the first place shoppers turn to.
A Cut of the Couponing Pie
We mentioned in the beginning of this post just how much buyers value being able to save money, and couponing is one of the main ways of doing so. Whether you use this method with free shipping, bundling, BOGOing or just giving a straight up discount, coupons are one of the strongest siren calls of eCommerce.
What you, the Amazon seller, have to be aware of is how people are using your site to get the best couponing deal for themselves. Amazon’s layout (i.e. how the feedback is arranged, how many stars a seller or the product has, etc.) is really easy to browse through, and this means potential buyers don’t have to spend long on your page before they’re armed with enough information to comparison shop.
Knowledge is Power
They will either visit your page first and compare it against others, or do the reverse. While you can’t really control what websites they go on, you can make it really hard to click off yours. Instead of just giving them the milk for free, make them want to buy the cow by showcasing the coupons you have so they’ll see your Amazon page as the primary and best choice. Remember, buyers today have oodles of options at their fingertips, so you’ve got to do everything in your power to make yourself one of them.
Knowledge is power, especially in the eCommerce world. The more you know about Amazon customer perceptions the better equipped you’ll be to keep gaining those competitive edges. However, one thing that consumers don’t always have in their minds when they shop is how often prices change, and it’s one thing you’ve got to do a bit on your own. But just because that’s the case doesn’t mean we here at RepricerExpress don’t take a special interest in it, which is why we’ve got a 15-day free trial waiting for you right now.
