The Buy Box marketplace corresponds to the little yellow “add to cart” button on Amazon or green on Cdiscount, found on product sheets and lists.
Its main purpose is to highlight and prioritize one merchant’s offer over another. However, since most buyers don’t make the effort to consult other sellers’ offers on the product, most of the time, merchants who don’t win the Buy Box (we’re talking about a competition!) lose sales.
But this emphasis is no accident. Quite the contrary, in fact! Although marketplaces do not disclose their Buy Box allocation rules, what we do know is thatan algorithm is programmed to select sellers. The main criterion used is the customer’s buying experience (price, seller rating, number of reviews, customer service, delivery speed, etc.).
So it’s easy to see why an impeccable logistics strategy is essential. Coupled with a pricing strategy, it’s even better!
In this article, we’ll explain the logistics and pricing strategy you need to put all the chances on your side to get… and keep… the Buy Box!
How does the Buy Box marketplace work?
First of all, it’s important to understand the inner workings of the Buy Box marketplace. Products are distributed in several ways in marketplaces like Amazon, namely :
- Live homepage on the website,
- Product category lists,
- Lists of products that appear during a search on a search engine.
To remain competitive, 3 things must be taken into account:
- Quality of logistics service,
- Preparation times,
- Service quality.
Satisfying the consumer
The Buy Box on marketplaces has one objective: to provide the best possible customer satisfaction.
It is in fact a mechanism used by the Marketplace to highlight and give visibility to the most attractive and interesting offer, but above all one that offers the best quality guarantees to the consumer.
The marketplace will therefore have to make a choice, for the same product, and prioritize an offer according to the parameters that differentiate them, namely :
- Price: Marketplaces want to be known for their low prices.
- Delivery: Highly demanded by consumers, delivery must be fast, so an offer promised within 24 hours will be valued more highly than one that arrives within a week.
- Risk: This is one of the least tangible criteria, since it depends on a wide variety of parameters.
These three criteria form the basis of the Buy Box decision. They have an impact on e-retailers, because it ‘s not enough to present the cheapest offer in order to stand out from the competition. On Marketplaces, there is a multiplicity of criteria that enable you to be successful and avoid competition when selling branded products. Watch our Buy Box webinar for more information.
But what actions can a merchant take?
The key factors for increasing the price at which you are entitled to obtain the Buy Box lie in :
- Delivery times: By maximizing the performance of your supply chain and reducing Marketplace delivery times, you’ll considerably increase your chances of success.
- Monitoring performance indicators: Marketplaces provide you with information on their performance criteria.
Price optimization: by equipping yourself with a repricer, you’ll be able to automatically update your prices on several different channels…
Logistics performance
Consumer loyalty and, more generally, customer satisfaction have become the sinews of war. Marketplaces are fighting to win customers, but above all to keep them! To do this, they don’t hesitate to set very strict criteria and impose them on merchants. The best that can happen, if you respect these rules, is to get the Buy Box marketplace. The worst is the closure of your account.
Among these criteria, we find criterion no. 1, the most important in the eyes of the marketplaces for obtaining the Buy Box: logistics performance!
How can you be logistically efficient?
- Warehouses that receive information (orders, inventory) as quickly as possible (preferably connected in real time to your sales channels).
- A logistics team organized and prepared for peak orders, with automated and simplified preparation processes,
- Fast, efficient parcel collection by carriers,
Shippingbo concentrates OMS, WMS and TMS to optimize all these steps:
- Order retrieval and stock synchronization with OMS e-commerce,
- Optimization of the warehouse to manage order picking more efficiently according to priorities, thanks to the e-commerce WMS,
- Label automation for more efficient order dispatch thanks to e-commerce TMS.
The importance of logistics
To obtain the Buy Box and be the most visible merchant on marketplaces, companies must be able to :
- Reduce upstream preparation times,
- Manage activity peaks linked to important days (sales, flash sales, etc.),
- Improve customer satisfaction,
- Avoid order cancellations.
Pricing strategies and their secrets
The right pricing allows you to benefit from a maximum Buy Box. Here are some examples of repricing strategies that don’t work:
- Be a penny cheaper: This is the most widespread technique. It allows you to obtain a certain number of Buy Boxes, and will force competitors’ prices down.
- Line up just below the Buy Box.
- Define a rule according to your competitors. You can choose to refuse to lower prices for competitor A and lower prices for competitor B. This technique often conceals the fact that minimum prices have not been well chosen.
We can also put our common strategies aside to focus on the success factors in repricing, such as :
- Choose the most suitable prize to win the Buy Box by selecting the highest price,
- Pricing as quickly as possible to gain a competitive edge,
- Reaching speed ceilings,
- Choose appropriate price limits. By modeling costs, you can calculate margins and find the desired minimum price base.
Conclusion
Are you an e-tailer who wants to obtain, but above all keep, the Buy Box at the highest price? We hope this article has helped!
Maxime Zablot, our expert in e-commerce performance, and Julien Demoor, Ceo of Multiply, publisher of dynamic pricing solutions for marketplaces, will give you all the tips you need to get and keep the Buy Box without sacrificing your margins!
For even more tips, don’t hesitate to watch the replay of our webinar dedicated to the Buy Box!
