Sellers are collectively furious! Autumn sales are dismal, is Amazon "forcing" sellers to lower prices?

The 2024 Amazon Prime membership promotion was launched globally from October 8th to 9th. However, compared with the grand and lively promotions in previous years, this year's cross-border e-commerce circle seems particularly "quiet", and fewer sellers are discussing explosive orders and gameplay.

As early as when the Member Day was scheduled, the sellers in various big selling groups had three reactions to this promotion: normal preparation, not participating, and complaining about the start time of the promotion.

There are also sellers who joked: Membership Day is like the stock market, it opens at the daily limit, it all depends on luck!

Looking at the first-day performance of sellers on various sites, the performance of the big promotion can be divided into two extremes.

Some sellers successfully welcomed a surge in orders, while more sellers felt the atmosphere was lukewarm.

Sellers in the US and European sites have seen a continuous surge in orders, with many expecting sales to increase tenfold or even higher. In particular, sellers who cut prices as much as possible on Member Day and are relatively strong and willing to lower their profile seem to have had an ideal first-day performance.

However, many sellers still said that this year's autumn Prime Day did not meet their expectations, and generally there was no significant improvement compared to usual. Some sellers even complained that it was "disappointing" and "dismal."

But judging from the overall feedback, compared with the Member Day in the summer, there are still only a few sellers who actually achieved a surge in orders during this autumn promotion.

There is no doubt that the poor sales of some Amazon sellers in the autumn sales promotion are caused by many factors:

1. The frequency of promotional activities is too high. Consumers are not aware of Amazon's autumn promotion and are more inclined to shop during the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday in order to get higher discounts.

2. All major platforms (Walmart, Wayfair, Target, Temu) are holding promotions, taking away some of the traffic

3. Fewer sellers sign up to participate in the platform: Many sellers participating in the autumn promotion have the need to clear their inventory, and those who do not want to clear their inventory basically do not sign up for the event.

4. The $50 Prime exclusive discount discourages some sellers from participating in the promotion, which is equivalent to the "registration fee" for participating in the promotion, further increasing the sellers' operating costs.

5. Price restrictions disrupt the rhythm of promotions: Amazon’s price restrictions on its autumn promotions have forced many sellers to lower discounts in advance.

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The above factors may cause some Amazon sellers to have lower-than-expected order results, but some sellers are even worse off as they were unable to participate in the autumn promotion due to various reasons: shopping cart loss, FBA warehouse explosion, account closure due to video verification/account association/CPC fraud, etc.

It is also worth mentioning that some sellers have reported that a price tag of “Not competitively priced” has recently appeared on Amazon’s front desk.

Specifically, on the product details page, a label "Not competively priced" appears.

This label directly informs consumers that the price of this product will be higher than other similar products! Moreover, this label appeared before the autumn prime day!

Many sellers believe that this label is a measure taken by Amazon to increase traffic and deal with low-price competitors. Is it simply the official step to force sellers to engage in internal competition? Sellers are in a more difficult situation...

But as of now, Amazon has not made any response to this new label, and this label has not been officially launched on the Amazon front desk, so sellers do not need to worry.

Although the first-day data is not satisfactory, the autumn promotion is not over yet:

• US Prime membership promotion time: October 8-October 9 (Pacific Daylight Time)

• Prime membership promotion time in Japan: October 19-October 20 (early bird event: October 17-18)

• Australian Prime membership promotion time: October 8 to October 13 (lasting 6 days)

Here are some strategies for you to get more benefits in the next promotion:

1. Adjust the pace of advertising : If the performance on the first day is unsatisfactory, you can first lower the advertising budget, focus on keywords with high conversion rates, and then gradually increase advertising investment to avoid advertising waste.

2. Try to keep prices stable and avoid frequent price adjustments : especially for popular products. Rationally plan the promotional strategies for the upcoming Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday and other major promotions, and make arrangements in advance.

3. Make full use of off-site traffic : In addition to relying on traffic within the Amazon site, sellers can also increase exposure by driving traffic to their stores through deal sites, KOL cooperation, and other means.

In any case, sellers only need to do what they should do. The next few months will be a critical period for Amazon sellers to compete for market share. Sellers need to pay close attention to platform dynamics, optimize promotion strategies, and seize every potential opportunity for explosive sales.