Your Key To Success: Brand Protection on Amazon

Do we need to repeat that Amazon is the largest global marketplace? The number of sellers continues to rise year-over-year, and the same is happening with Amazon’s revenue. According to?Marketplace Pulse, Amazon’s revenue has increased from $386.06 billion in 2020 by 22% to $469.82 billion in 2021.

The growth of this marketplace has “side-effects” like making it more and more desirable for everyone, but also it requires sellers to care very highly about all operations and the protection of their brand.?

Let’s cross through some vital things needed to maintain a successful business and protect your brand on Amazon.

The vital list of operations for sustaining and building a successful business on Amazon

For any seller who wants to maintain and build a successful business on Amazon, it is crucial making sure that the following checklist accomplishes:?

• Optimized inventory strategy: Monitor the most important inventory metrics like excess inventory, sell-through rate, stranded inventory, and in-stock rate.?
• Enhanced on-site experience:?Making sure that the content copy is:
• Indexed for search and answered all the questions about the product as much as possible
• Have at least 5-7 images with highlighted features and benefits of the product
• Have a product video
• Making sure the retail readiness is achieved:?
• 4-6 weeks of coverage of inventory and back stock of top-selling items in the warehouse
• Accurate and clear content updated according to Amazon requirements (title, images, bullet points, description, A+ content, and Brand Store)
• Minimum of 15 reviews and rating of at least 3.5 stars?
• Winning the Buy Box

The importance and impact of winning the Buy Box

Owning the?Buy Box on Amazon?is not only one of the crucial factors that will affect your sales positively, but it is also one of the main factors for your brand protection.?

To understand the Buy Box, sellers need to understand Amazon pricing rules.?

• The first rule is?fair pricing, which means that any product must have a price equal to or lower than the price of the same item sold by the seller on other sites or virtual marketplaces.
• The second rule is that Amazon is a dynamic platform, meaning the item price fluctuates according to market conditions, comparable to any global economy.?

Essential factors for winning the Buy Box include:?

• Pricing
• Having a low?order defect rate
• Good performance metrics
• Excellent quality of customer service
• Length of time the seller is presented on Amazon Marketplace.?

Additionally, the order delivery time is one of the factors that can result in winning the Buy Box. There are examples where sellers with the same or a bit higher price won the Buy Box because they offered a faster delivery time.?

Resellers or Third-Party Sellers: working with and against them

In simple words, a reseller is an individual or a company that sources products at wholesale – or at least in bulk – and then sells or resells them on Amazon. If we look back in the past, up to 2010, Amazon consisted entirely of resellers.?

Resellers can be authorized and unauthorized. A manufacturer permits authorized resellers to sell its products or resellers that are Amazon suppliers (vendors). Unauthorized sellers can buy products from other retailers directly from the manufacturer or distributor, buy closeout or liquidated items, and sell stolen or counterfeit goods.?

And the last mentioned claim is when your brand protection is at risk. At this point, we will suppose that you are a brand registered seller on Amazon but have issues with resellers.?

Once some sellers start losing the Buy Box or face the price erosion, it commonly “wakes up,” realizing there is an issue with resellers. Besides this, common other challenges that will occur are:?

• Poor brand representation on third-party listings
• Negative customer reviews
• Strained retainer relationships
• Lack of marketing and advertising campaign results in the case of losing the Buy Box.?

Each seller should analyze and answer the question on should authorize third-party sellers or not.?

Authorization benefits are simplified logistics, avoiding daily sales management, inventory purchased upfront, and some additional services provided by resellers.??

The challenges are:

• Less control.
• The potential for having price competition.
• No maximum investments in brand awareness.

To learn about protecting brand value and margin, which are proactive and reactive steps and which are key takeaways go to the link in the comments