Amazon stands for low prices and fast, free shipping across the broadest selection of products. These promises are a big reason customers continue to come back to our store to purchase the goods they need. Independent sellers who share our commitment to customers are succeeding and building thriving businesses, and we celebrate their success.
We care, above all else, about maintaining customers’ trust so they continue buying more from our store in the future, not whether our retail business "wins" a particular sale.
Helping customers find the products they want
When customers search in our store for something to buy, we show them products we think they’ll be most satisfied with. We’re constantly refining our predictions of the “best fit” for the customer based on factors like customer actions (such as how frequently an item was purchased by other customers), the product’s price, delivery speed, what’s hot and new (like the latest cellphone model or a recording artist’s new album release), and measures of post-purchase satisfaction like return rates. Sometimes customers tell us—through their actions—that they’re not satisfied with a product they bought (including one of our private-label products). When that happens, we rank other products—ones we’ve determined customers are more likely to love—higher in search results.
When customers search in our store for something to buy, we show them products we think they’ll be most satisfied with. Customers can easily see both the featured offer (the offer we predict customers are most likely to buy) and all of the other non-featured offers - here listed under "More Buying Choices"
Helping customers choose the best product offer
Products in our store often have multiple listings from different sellers. Each seller has its own price, shipping fees, delivery promise, and returns policy. When there are multiple sellers for a product, we feature the best of those offers prominently on the product page, in what’s sometimes referred to as “the buy box.” Most of the time, all of the offers are from independent sellers (our retail business has offers for less than 5% of products in our store that have a featured offer). All of the Amazon retail and independent sellers’ offers compete to be one of the featured offers based on the same criteria, such as low price (inclusive of delivery), fast delivery, a track record of good customer service, and reliability in meeting its delivery promises.
The featured offer reflects the offer that past customer choices tell us is the one that customers are most likely to buy if they compared all of the available offers. Customer preference determines which offer we feature. The vast majority of customers who take the time to compare all of the non-featured offers ultimately select the offer we’ve featured on the product page, which confirms that we’re doing a good job predicting what customers want.
All of the Amazon retail and independent sellers’ offers compete to be one of the featured offers based on the same criteria… Customer choices determine which offer we feature.
We feature the best offer—the offer that past customer actions tell us is the one that customers are most likely to buy if they compared all of the available offers in detail - on the product page (A). Customers can still view all of the available non-featured offers for the product on the product page (B). The vast majority of customers who compare all of the available offers ultimately select the offer we featured on the product page, which tells us we’re accurately predicting the best offers to feature.
We don’t want to disappoint customers, so if we or our independent sellers don’t have a good offer that we’re confident will preserve customer trust in our store, we won’t feature an offer at all. We’d rather the customer not buy that product from Amazon than have a poor shopping experience and lose trust in Amazon. Of course, even when we choose not to feature a particular offer, customers can still view all of the available non-featured offers for that product.
Customers can view all of the available non-featured offers for a product right on the product page.
It's not a zero-sum game between sellers and Amazon retail, or between our private-label products and sellers’ products. When customers trust Amazon’s store, they come back and shop more often, buying more from Amazon retail and from third parties. There will be many winners, and our customers get to pick them.
