Two different perspectives on why Amazon makes you click a box to redeem coupons.

Would have to agree (could easily be wrong) with Danny Silverman. Amazon ideally wants the reverse of you clicking on the coupon, while price matching versus competition to retain value seekers.

What exactly was Danny referring to? See below

If Amazon wanted you to automatically benefit from the coupon, they would automatically apply the coupon. Ok, so what's happening here? Turns out there's a post from November 12th 2021 titled "Strange Amazon Coupon Code Functionality" by Rishi Rawat of Frictionless Commerce

The above article was apparently prompted by a lively discussion about this Amazon coupon code topic on LinkedIn too.?Here is the link to that thread.

There's an interesting comment at the bottom of the article by Rishi, which gives weight to mine and Danny's assertion that clicking on the coupon is the reverse of what Amazon actually wants you to do, while they do want to benefit from the halo effect on CTR's and 'Add to Cart' rates by being able to leverage the coupon messaging in links and messaging.

My guess is that these banners help CTRs and Conversion rates. Also, many sellers get the benefit of the coupon without shoppers actually clicking the coupon for the discount. So it helps CTR and Conversions that the items it priced less, but I believe it also helps tremendously to have a Green and/or Orange Banner on your listings to help the customer add to cart. - Jason Boyce, Founder & CEO of Avenue7Media

Another angle is they use the 'click' so value seekers self segment themselves, for future targeting versus service seekers who may be time-pressed, not focused on savings, don't click and still purchase the item. That way Amazon can easily retarget them 'to site' leveraging Amazon Media Services and 'on site' leveraging Amazon's retail media.

We see it regularly at ChannelSight. A brand may initially think that a 'Where to Buy' solution, activated across owned, earned and paid media to help the consumer cut through the noise, find and purchase the brands' products, without competitive distraction, will simply generate a comparison shopping experience and ultimately a race to the bottom on price.

While on the face of it logical to assume, however, our data going back to 2013 across 70+ countries, 250+ clients, 1000+ brands, 4000+ retailers (of that 2000+ reporting sales) and literally millions of transactions, tells a whole different story.

People who interact with a 'Where to Buy' experience on a brand asset, tend to be heavily weighted towards 'service' and 'time sensitive' versus 'value seekers'.

People instinctively (or typically) understand that a brand is going to focus on promoting top tier retailers, who regularly stock their items, merchandise them well, offer an excellent buying experience and aftercare service to their end customers.

That all costs money and consumers generally understand that it's built into the price they pay for a given item in order to have a safe, enjoyable and reliable shopping experience.

Price if presented is a factor, however not typically the deciding factor. More likely they choose Amazon because of its hassle-free 'one click' purchase and free shipping with prime. They may choose Tesco because the purchase is part of a bigger basket of items e.g. 'weekly shop' they are building in order to collect more Clubcard points towards a family holiday.

They may select a specialist retailer because they happen to have a particular colour, shape, size or may also carry genuine/compatible accessories?for the item I want to purchase.

In North America, it's more common to show retail prices in a brands 'Where to Buy' experience. Outside of the US, you are typically presented with a logo that confirms which retailers carry a given item, 'In / Out of Stock' flag and a 'Buy Now',?'Add to Cart' or 'Learn More' call to action button.?

You may also see aggregated review ratings (e.g. ??? of 5) placed next to each retailer for the chosen item, as a further convincer to move forward if we're powering shoppable ratings and auditing reviews at retail on behalf of the brand.

If price sensitivity was the key driver and there are six retail options presented, then you'd expect to see six clicks every time a result is displayed, before a user decides where to ultimately purchase. Basically replicating the comparison shopping experience with pen and paper.

I'm sorry to say, that decision was taken in milliseconds as soon as they see the retailer logos. In an instant, they know which retailers have the item available to buy now and from years of shopping with these big brand retailers, what their value prop is.

My subconscious instinctively knows which one is the best option to select and what motivates me as a buyer, based on years worth of interaction, transactions and relationship building and repeated exposure to their marketing, while interacting with the retailer.

If I only cared about is getting the cheapest price, I may not even interact with the 'Where to Buy' button on a brand asset at all, as instinctively I know they are not motivated to present the retailers with the cheapest price, however, they're not 'rigging it', it's simply economics.?

They focus on the Pareto Principle, which essentially can be applied to more or less anything. That 20% of retailers are likely to drive 80% of a brand's sales volume.

"The Pareto Principle, named after?economist?Vilfredo Pareto, specifies that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes, asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs." - ?Thomas Brock of Investopedia

Ultimately having the cheapest price means nothing, if the retailer has no stock.

By default, brands tend to automatically not show retailers who are not in stock for a given item, so long as they don't have stock of that item. Otherwise, they apply a 'fair and equitable' principle and randomise the ordering of retailers presented on each click.

We regularly work with retailers as part of our retail commerce acceleration practice, to help level the playing field versus more established or pureplay e-commerce retailers, who tend to be less agile and carry more tech debt. Accelerating their transformation by plugging elements of our saas platform into their retail stack, along with strategy and trading support.

To bring this back to Amazon, interestingly they understood early on that competition is a very good thing for business (Especially their business!)

I remember back in 2013 when we started out on this journey at ChannelSight if a retailer complained about its position within the results of a brands 'where to buy' solution it was always against Amazon and not their traditional competitors. Basically, these retailers would prefer to be competing against nobody, however, it was less offensive to be competing against their traditional rivals versus this new online-only upstart called Amazon.

Ironically Amazon practically insisted that they were never returned as the sole result, always wanting to go head to head with their competitors and non-precious on what position they were in, so long as they were present.

Amazon knew back then, they needed the big-name logos to validate their legitimacy in the early days, that it was as 'safe' to do business with Amazon, as it was with any other major retailer wh you 'trust'.

Because Amazon was data-driven from day one, they also knew how good they were at going head to head and winning a 'Dutch auction'*, so having the competition present was a positive versus a negative.

*A method of selling in which the price is reduced until a buyer is found.