What is the Buy Box?

The Amazon Buy Box is the golden ticket for ecommerce businesses. It simplifies the purchasing process for consumers, and if your business wins this feature, your sales can skyrocket while you consolidate your brand image on Amazon.

Buy Box listings are awarded by Amazon, taking into account how successfully sellers meet their criteria. However, winning the Buy Box is not a guarantee that it will be kept. Sometimes a brand may not be eligible (due to lack of inventory, failure to meet Prime shipping requirements, etc.), but occasionally, a brand’s Buy Box may vanish without any sign of impending danger. This phenomenon is known as Buy Box suppression, a real nightmare for sellers.

Unraveling Buy Box Suppression

Buy Box suppression occurs when the “add to cart” button gets replaced on a listing—usually by a button that says “See All Buying Options”. This means the customer has to jump through more hoops to purchase a product. Removing the convenience of a one-click option drastically reduces the likelihood of customers buying your product.

When an item suffers suppression, its overall sales nosedive. Consequently, the overall ranking decreases too. Besides affecting sales, suppression can chip away at customer confidence in your product, your ties with Amazon, and connections with retail partners, setting you on a disastrous road to Profit Erosion.

Decoding the Reason Behind Buy Box Suppression

Frequently, Buy Box suppression occurs because no seller qualifies to win the Buy Box. Perhaps the seller metrics have fallen short, listings are unfinished, or their customer service isn’t up to scratch. However, most of the time, the fluctuations in Amazon’s pricing are to blame.

Amazon strategically drops prices on their best-selling items (1P) to stimulate sales and remain competitive. Their pricing strategy hinges on offering consumers the most appealing price (or the illusion of it), and Amazon takes deliberate measures to ensure they’re the marketplace offering it.

Amazon scans the internet to find if an ASIN is being offered cheaper on another retailer’s website. If they discover your product is being sold cheaper elsewhere, you may see your Buy Box disappear. To safeguard customers from paying more than the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP), Amazon will suppress the Buy Box.

Take a look at an instance where a listing was suppressed due to a lower price elsewhere.

Suppression doesn’t just occur when other sellers drop their prices; it can also occur if the price on a product sees a sudden hike.

For instance, if an item on Amazon has been consistently selling at $19.99 for the past year and abruptly the price leaps to $42.99, this could cause Buy Box suppression.

Preventing Buy Box Suppression

In many scenarios, sellers can prevent suppression by ensuring their account metrics are satisfactory and their listings are comprehensive. For suppression triggered by pricing, the most effective prevention strategy is to keep an eye on other sellers’ listings and adjust your prices to stay competitive.

With countless sellers on Amazon and other ecommerce platforms, any form of monitoring might seem overwhelming, but there are hacks and tools you can leverage.

Useful Tools

Here are a few tools and Chrome extensions that brands can utilize to monitor prices:

For comparing a product across the web to other marketplaces: • Honey • WikiBuy

For monitoring price fluctuations: Helium 10 • Camel-Camel-Camel

For dynamically adjusting the price of your product throughout the day to stay on top of sudden price drops from other retailers, consider Repricer-Express.