A lot changed in the online marketplace industry in 2017, but one thing hasn’t: Amazon’s marketplace continues to dominate, and it’s more challenging for sellers to compete with the increased competition on the retail giant’s shopping portal.These stories review what happened in 2017 on the Amazon marketplace.
- Amazon began the year by sharing how areas of its marketplace fared in 2016, including the number of products sold through FBA and gross sales on its Amazon Business marketplace.
Amazon tops 2 billion products delivered via FBA in 2016 - Amazon began discounting its sellers’ products … without asking them. This is what it means for sellers.
What it means when Amazon discounts marketplace sellers’ products - An updated return policy announced in August worried some Amazon sellers. The policy would automatically authorize returns to sellers who ship items themselves, standardizing the return process already in place for purchases made by Amazon or FBA. Here’s how sellers felt about the change.
Amazon’s ‘automatically authorized’ returns raise concerns for marketplace sellers - Online sales tax was a hot issue in 2017, and it hit close to home with marketplace sellers. A Multistate Tax Commission initiative was put in place to help sellers that use FBA address potential tax liabilities without paying fines and penalties for not complying with state laws in the past. This story breaks down the issue at hand for FBA sellers and how this initiative was supposed to help.
States offer a sales tax amnesty program for marketplace sellers - After restricting sellers in 2016 on soliciting product reviews, Amazon launched the Early Reviewer Rewards program in June, a service in which sellers pay Amazon to search for customers to write reviews of newly listed products.
Need product reviews? Amazon may help - Amazon sold nearly $2.5 billion worth of goods on its third annual Prime Day. It was a big day, and one that Amazon’s marketplace sellers cannot ignore. In five charts, here’s an analysis of Prime Day from various angles.
Amazon Prime Day analysis in 5 charts - Merchants who had a strong Cyber 5 were more sophisticated in their Amazon strategy this year. Here are some of the strategies they used, and how much was sold on the Amazon marketplace during the five-day holiday period from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday.
How marketplace sellers can get a boost from Amazon this holiday - Lastly, how much is actually spent on Amazon each year? This chart shows Amazon’s gross merchandise sales in 2015 and 2016, and Internet Retailer’s 2017 sales projection.
How much money is spent on Amazon?