Product Pricing API and Notifications FAQ

The Product Pricing API enables apps to automate updating and managing prices on behalf of sellers, and reduces the manual effort and time required to keep prices competitive.

One of the key benefits of the Product Pricing API is its ability to support the development of repricers. Repricers are an automated pricing tool that can continuously monitor price points, competitor prices, and other relevant factors to adjust a seller's prices in real-time. By leveraging the data and insights provided by the API and Notifications, repricers help sellers maintain a competitive edge and ensure offers are priced attractively for customers.

When adopting and developing products with the Product Pricing API, you empower sellers to quickly and efficiently update their prices based on market conditions, while customers are more likely to find the best deals and value for the products they are interested in purchasing.

The Competitive Price Threshold, Featured Offer Price and Average Selling Price are published through our APIs. The ANY_OFFER_CHANGED and PRICE_HEALTH notifications provide this data through the competitivePriceThreshold element, landedPrice element (inside the buyBoxPrices object), and averageSellingPrice element respectively.

The getCompetitiveSummary operation is an addition to the Product Pricing API v2022-05-01. It builds upon the getItemOffers operation by providing more details about competitive pricing for a given ASIN. The key improvements and features of the getCompetitiveSummary operation include:

• Featured buying options: The operation returns the featured buying option details for an ASIN. This includes the specific sellers, conditions, fulfillment types, and pricing information for each featured offer. getCompetitiveSummary returns all featured offers. It also provides segmented featured offer details, which include the specific customer segments (for example, Prime, Non-Prime and Glance views percentage) for each featured offer.

• Reference prices: getCompetitiveSummary returns a list of reference prices for an ASIN, such as the competitive price threshold. This informs sellers of the price that can help them become eligible for the featured offer.

• Lowest priced offers: The getCompetitiveSummary operation returns details on the lowest priced offers for an ASIN, filtered by condition and offer type (consumer vs. business).

We notify you when your offer becomes ineligible to be a Featured Offer on the product detail page. This happens when your total price (price + shipping) is higher than the Competitive External Price, if available, or when your total price is higher than recent prices. For your offer to be eligible to be a Featured Offer on the product detail page, consider pricing your offers competitively and confirm you meet the eligibility criteria.

The PRICING_HEALTH notification alerts you whenever an offer becomes ineligible from winning the Featured Offer (FO). This doesn't mean that the offer has lost placement as the Featured Offer because of competitors. It means that Amazon cannot select the offer as the Featured Offer at the current price, regardless of changes to price or stock of competitors.

The ANY_OFFER_CHANGED notification alerts you whenever a price changes. Unlike PRICING_HEALTH, it does not alert you when an offer becomes ineligible for the Featured Offer.

The Competitive Price Threshold is based on competitive prices from other retailers (excluding other Amazon sellers). Your offer might be ineligible for the Buy Box if your total price (price + shipping) is greater than this competitive price.

The Competitive External Price is the lowest price for an item, or items that customers might consider being equivalent, recently found at another reputable retailer outside the Amazon store. While we do not reveal the names of the retailers we check, we review this list regularly to ensure these retailers are relevant to customers for each country and product group. Here are some examples of Competitive External Price:

• We might use the product price of a $10.99 garlic press found at a reputable retailer outside Amazon as the Competitive External Price for that same product in our store.
• We might use the per-unit price of a 6-pack of hand sanitizer found at a reputable retailer outside Amazon to compute the Competitive External Price for a 12-pack of the same product in our store. In this case, we would multiply the per-unit price available outside Amazon by 12 to adjust for the different pack sizes.
• We might also use the product price of that garlic press as the Competitive External Price for products that customers might consider being equivalent because they have near-identical attributes (such as size, shape, design, material, specifications, and features), but with a different brand name.

The average selling price of a product is calculated based on the sum of the prices at which customers have bought a product in the Amazon store in the last 60 days divided by units sold. Prices and quantity sold during promotions (for example, Best Deals, Lightning Deals) are excluded.

The Price by Amazon is the highest price listed for the product in the last 14 days that is shipped and sold by Amazon.

The list price is the suggested retail price of a product as provided by a manufacturer, supplier, or seller. In the United States, the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is a list price. Amazon might use the product’s list price to determine whether Amazon will choose to feature an offer, considering that products are usually not sold for more than the list price. If you provide a list price for a product, ensure that its value is accurate and up to date. If you submit a list price with a value of 0, this indicates you do not have a list price, and we will not consider it when assessing offer prices. For more information on list price, refer to Amazon Policy on Reference Prices.

The expected timeline for full integration, including the development of automated pricing features, is typically 1-2 months. The timeline includes:

1. The developer team's availability: The availability and expertise of the developer's internal development team can impact the speed at which new automated pricing features are designed and implemented.
2. Integration of the PRICING_HEALTH and the ANY_OFFER_CHANGED notifications: These notifications provide sellers with real-time alerts on changes to their offer eligibility and competitor pricing, respectively. Integrating these notifications is the first step in enabling automated pricing capabilities.
3. Integration with the getFeaturedOfferExpectedPriceBatch operation: This operation can help sellers compete for featured offer placement on the product detail page for items listed in new condition that ship nationwide. The operation retrieves the Featured Offer Expected Price (FOEP) for a batch of up to 40 SKUs. The FOEP is the price at which an offer can become the Featured Offer on the product detail page. Integrating with this API gives sellers the pricing data they need to competitively position their offers.
4. Integration with the Listing Items API to submit price updates in real-time: In addition to the pricing notifications, developers will need to integrate with the Listing Items API to be able to programmatically update their product prices based on the insights gained from the Product Pricing API.
5. Development of automated pricing features: With the notifications and APIs in place, sellers can then work on building out new features and tools that enable the automated management and adjustment of product prices based on market conditions and competitor activity.