The world economy has been dramatically affected because of the coronavirus pandemic. Many businesses have no choice but to temporarily shut down their operations since people worldwide reduce spending habits and only focused on essential goods such as groceries, household staples, and medical supplies.
If you are Amazon seller selling essential products, Amazon still allows you to continue selling on their platform as long as you don’t violate their guidelines about their ‘fair pricing policies.’ Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon has already suspended almost 4,000 seller accounts for violating their fair pricing policies, and surely you wouldn’t want that. Amazon sellers who are seeking to profit from this pandemic crisis will not only get their account suspended from Amazon but also may face prosecution.
According to the platform’s fair pricing policy, Amazon sellers cannot set a price that is a lot higher than the standard price being offered on or outside of the platform. While this may sound easy, keeping up with price changes is quite challenging while keeping your product listings profitable.
One of the best solutions you can do is to utilize your Amazon repricing software to prevent prices from going too high or too low while still being in compliance with the platform’s fair pricing policy.
Also, below we have listed some repricing strategies that you could use to keep your items profitable, especially during this pandemic crisis.
Reprice “old” inventory
If you still have some essential products that are still sitting on the FBA warehouse for too long, they should be the first on your list for repricing to flush them all out. Use your repricer software to look for your old inventory by clicking the little triangle just under the “Date Created” column. It will sort all your listings from oldest to newest. Once done, you can now reprice each of them, but make sure to price competitively.
Reprice “high-quantity” inventory
Besides looking for your old items, you should also consider repricing items with a high number of stocks. Flushing them out will not only create sales but also avoid costly storage fees in the long run. By using the repricer software, look for the “Quantity” column in the Inventory page and sort that from most to least. Once done, make sure to reprice each item competitively, and you’ll be surprised to see an immediate boost in your sales.
Reprice “high-priced” inventory
Since you should avoid violating Amazon’s fair pricing policy, especially during this pandemic, you have to reprice all your high-priced items in your current inventory. In the repricer software, select the ‘Price’ column and again click the small triangle to sort the price from highest to the lowest. If your price is way higher than the current FBA price, you should do some necessary research about the standard pricing and price your items competitively.
Reprice “newest” inventory
On the other hand, if you have new products that fall under the fast-moving item category, you have to make sure that their price is optimized for maximum profit. However, it doesn’t mean that you have to price them high but price them competitively according to the standard maximum profit.
Reprice “expiring” items
Since you are selling essential items, look out for items that come with an expiration date. It is always wise to monitor items that are getting close to Amazon’s cut-off dates for product expiration. After all, according to Amazon’s expiration date guidelines, products that are expiring within 50 days will be removed from the Amazon warehouse. So before hitting the 50-day mark, make sure that all your expiring items are already competitively repriced.
Reprice “seasonal” inventory
If you have seasonal items on your inventory but still fall under the essential category, you need to keep them priced competitively to get back your capital so you can invest more in fast-moving items. However, there is no way you can sort seasonal inventory in your listing, so you have to search the item one by one in the keyword search of the inventory page.
Additional Repricing Strategies You Could in this Time of Crisis
Plan your inventory as accurately as possible.
In this time of pandemic crisis, it is not wise to have too many of one item. However, it is also not good to keep low inventory and run out of it. While it may be impossible to have a perfect balance inventory for each item that you have, you still need to plan your inventory as accurately as possible. In case you have run out of stocks, you can provide your repricer software specific rules like automatically setting up the price of each item according to the standard market value once you’ve replenished your inventory.
Learn the art of supply and demand.
This strategy is quite pretty straightforward. When you’ve got more items than your current potential buyers, you need to lower your price at a competitive level to make it attractive. On the other hand, when there are lots of buyers than your current items in stock, you can raise your price and take advantage of the market. But again, make sure not to violate the fair price policy of Amazon when doing repricing.
Be selective on your competitors.
As you may already know, pricing competition in Amazon remains intense despite the pandemic crisis. However, since there are lots of sellers out there selling the same items on your product listing, it is impossible to compete with all of them all the time. Instead, you can narrow your competition by choosing only the ones that are worth competing for and exclude others. One perfect way to do this is to select sellers that have a relatively good rating. You should also consider those that are gaining positive feedback instead of competing with sellers that are just starting out. Also, since shipments overseas are quite difficult and pricey, it is wise to exclude competition for those who ship offshore to avoid expensive shipping costs. Once you have selected the right competitors, use your repricer software to reprice your items accordingly.
Avoid repricing too low.
Even if all your competitors priced their items too low, it is highly recommended that you should not do the same even if it’s tempting to do so. Having the lowest price in the market is not always the best repricing strategy since, more likely, you won’t generate any profit at all. What you can do here is make time to research about the product’s sales rank and price history. Using that data, you’ll have a better idea of whether repricing your item is good or not.
Win the Buy Box.
One of the main reasons most sellers are using automated repricing software is for them to get a higher chance of winning the Amazon Buy Box even during the pandemic crisis. Remember that the Buy Box will choose a seller based on various criteria. Also, the Buy Box and will be rotated to all eligible sellers. The reason why you should be competing to win the Buy Box is that 83% of all Amazon sales come from this feature, and one way to win it is by optimizing your pricing strategy using a repricer software. You should also note that second-hand items don’t have a chance to win the Buy Box, so focus your repricer to provide the most competitive pricing on your newest items.
Avoid price wars.
As we have mentioned earlier, having the lowest price is not always the best strategy. However, emotions can sometimes affect the seller’s decision making, especially when all of their competitors have significantly dropped their prices. There are lots of sellers, especially in this time of crisis, still gets involved in price wars with other Amazon sellers.
The good thing about using a repricing software is that it can be configured to avoid getting involved in price wars. It can maintain all your item’s prices within a sustainable level and avoid pricing your product to the point of a break-even or to with no profit at all.
One way to do this is to set a minimum price to all of your items in the repricer software to avoid the price from going lower than the sustainable level. With this, you are assured that your items are priced based on facts and not on your emotions. And besides, it has been proven that letting one’s emotion to affect their pricing decisions is one way to fail on the Amazon FBA business.
Get the Competitive Edge with Repricing
Repricing is an excellent way to ensure that all your items are priced competitively while at the same time, avoiding any violations when it comes to Amazon’s fair pricing policy. While there might be some exceptions to these repricing strategies we have mentioned above, but surely all of them should help you to sell more products despite this pandemic crisis.
So what do you think about our repricing strategies? What strategy do you like best? Do you have any pricing strategies that you’d like to share? Share us your thoughts by leaving a comment below.