Amazon Marketplace Study for New Sellers

1. Amazon Marketplace
Yogesh,Minghao,Sean,Rhodri

2. Introduction
• If we were a company it would be attractive to sell onAmazon:
• A whole shop window of products
• One of the largest retailers in the world
• Customers are attracted to them
• Good reputation
• AmazonWeb Service: automating processes.
• International business: selling from abroad
Reputation based platform: modelling this we will get a lot of business.

3. How Amazon Marketplace works for seller
• Register your seller account
What will you need to complete the registration?
Credit Card, Phone Number, Company Registration Details, Primary Contact Person
Information, Beneficial Owner Information, Bank Account Information
• Upload your listings
• Customers see and buy your products
• Deliver your products to the customer
• Receive your payment

4. How to increase visibility of products
1) Optimize your products visibility via Amazon’s
SERP
• Main search bar most is common method of
customers for locating items on Amazon.
• Amazon’s Search Engine page rank(SERP).
• Amazon SERP working is different than Google
search engine working.
• Amazon’s SERP based on following product
ranking factors
1. Price
2. Title
3. Image
4. Description
5. Fulfilment channel

5. How to increase visibility of products
2) Sponsored Product
• It is an advertising service of Amazon
that helps to promote the products seller
list on amazon.
• It uses cost-per-click bid mechanism.
• Factors consider before advertising
1. check out the competition
2. compare their price position with
similar items already selling on the site.
3. study the best selling items in
relevant category characteristics.

6. How to increase visibility of products
3) Promotional activity
• Customers love promotions,
because promotions offer discounts
and ways to save money.
• Seller can make a great impression
on customers by offering some
promotions.
• Amazon provides Promotional
Manager to create promotional
offers.

7. Amazon Feedback

8. An anonymous online marketplace with no
consequences for bad behaviour
Based on information from ‘The Economics of Reputation and Feedback Systems in E-Commerce
Marketplaces’,Tadelis 2015

9. Solution: feedback and reputation
• Buyers have 90 days to leave feedback, 60 days to remove feedback
• Buyers can leave a short comment and a rating of 1 to 5
• Not mandatory – most sellers receive feedback 10-20% of the time
Positive
Neutral
Negative

10. The ‘Buy box’

11. Two-way feedback
• Ebay, Airbnb, Uber etc
• Problem of retaliation:
EngineeringTrust: Reciprocity in the Production of Reputation Information –
Bolton et al
• Inflated ratings
Source:Wired

12. Amazon feedback: (now) one-way
• Amazon accept all sellers are likely to receive negative feedback at some
point
• Users less afraid to leave negative feedback
• Can leave sellers vulnerable to bad reviews for spurious or even malicious
reasons
NBC News
Amazon seller forums

13. Amazon reviews can get weird
TheWolf ofWall Street
@AmznMovieRevws, twitter

14. Improving Online Reputation
• Positive historical transactions
• Good reviews: positive consistent service over several transactions
• But ranking highly depends on Amazon being happy with service levels also.
• Seller page content: providing a detailed and transparent description of item
• Reputable names
• AB1100 – doesn’t feel personal
• Derryck Riding – putting a name to a brand makes it more authentic
• Specialism: becoming known for being a great seller for one type of area
• Large delivery window: more secure for company and may result in better reviews.
• Conversely, having a large window also puts people off buying in the first place.
• Amazon endorsements e.g.Amazon Prime, fullfiled byAmazon
• Including the company who made the product e.g. “Uncharted 3 by Sony”

15. OtherTechniques Sellers UseTo Increase
Reputation
• Automatic refund: any problems with item
• Send item same day delivery
• Friendly customer service: quick replies
• Sell lots of cheap items
• Lots of positive reviews by simply delivering the item when its said to be delivered.
• Friends and family buy items and leave positive reviews
• No company would ever admit to this and Amazon has strict policies against this.
• Extra items for free: unexpected or great deals may make people overlook problems a lot more.
• Either included with the item
• Special offers
Overall: online reputation is very important and quite often especially if an item is cheap to produce, sellers would
rather a incur cost than a bad review

16. Minimising Impact Of Negative Feedback
• Amazon will remove feedback only in the following cases:
• The feedback includes obscene language.
• The feedback includes personally identifiable information.
• The entire feedback comment is a product review.
• The entire feedback comment is regarding fulfilment or customer service for an order fulfilled by Amazon.
• Amazon Marketplace buyers can remove feedback they have left
• Resolving issues personally is very important to try to limit bad feedback.
• However, putting pressure on a buyer is unacceptable and a violation of Amazon’s Community Rules.
• Refunded customers can still leave feedback providing an incentive for the seller to amend problems.
• Sellers can leave feedback on the buyers feedback.
• This is rarely seen

17. Payment & Refund
.
• Payment for customer
• Do payment setting before make purchases.
• Using Credit card or Amazon Gift Card.
• Payment for seller
• Using credit card to receive money from Amazon.
• International payment: third parties
• Payoneer
• World First
• Current Direct

18. Payment & Refund (con’t)• Issued Refunds
• Most refund are issued based on the payment method used at the time of purchase
• Instant refund option without waiting for process
• Instant refunds are either refunded to credit card or issued as an amazon gift card
balance.
• 2 weeks for process of return, after items had been received.
• Return postage costs
• Receive an incorrect item
• Receive a damaged item
• Received a defective item
• Return shoes and clothing

19. A-Z Guarantee
• AmazonA-Z Guarantee
• Make a purchase on amazon website or use Amazon Pay .
• The condition of the item customer buy and its timely delivery are guaranteed under it
• Purchases from a Marketplace Seller .
• Up to £2,500 of the purchase price, including delivery charges.

20. A-Z Guarantee(con’t)
• File an A-to-Z Guarantee Claim
• Go toYour Orders.
• Locate your order in the list and click File/View Claim.
• A-to-Z Guarantee claims typically take 1-2 weeks to process
• Enter the required information and click Report problem.

21. Why isTrust Important?
Plastic swordSteel sword
Ordered Reality

22. Brokers
• Middle men- for many purposes
• AmazonWeb Service- using integrated Web service API
• Programmatically exchange data
• Upload catalogue of items
• Create product reports
• Analyse statistics
• Seller automation –grow business and increase selling efficiency
• Integrates into workflows

23. Brokers: using the Amazon Marketplace Web
Service (MWS)
sellcoolstuff.com
Orders
Manufacturers can upload
their products to our
website.We can update
them with orders etc.
We can use MWS to upload products to
amazon, get sales, reports etc
We act as broker
Customer

24. Fulfilment by Amazon
• Send inventory to Amazon’s fulfilment centers.
• When orders are placed on the Amazon site, or when a seller sends order
information for orders placed through another sales channel, Amazon will pick,
pack, and ship the products to the seller’s customers.
• Frees sellers from having to manage the order fulfilment process, while still
allowing sellers to maintain control over their inventory.
• Sellers can more efficiently create and send inbound shipments of inventory to
Amazon’s warehouses and instruct Amazon to fulfil customer orders, creating a
nearly virtual business.
• There is no additional charge for using the Amazon MWS Fulfilment functionality;
only fees for the underlying FBA and selling services apply.