Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) plans on cleaning up the third-party "Amazon Marketplace" due to many product duplications that are most likely getting on the nerves of many regular Amazon shoppers (the writer included). This new "clean sweep" inventory strategy only deals with the bookselling section of Amazon's online offerings, but it comes years too late.ASINs, which are Amazon's unique numbers that are assigned to each individual product name or title (like a UPC code), are duplicated all over the e-tailer's website where it lets booksellers sell used and new books directly to Amazon customers for a small commission. The problem is that the largely unregulated Amazon Marketplace is littered with confusion due to so many ASIN duplications and such that the bargain shopper can become a tad frustrated when shopping for that immensely popular $3.95 used book.
But then again, Amazon's third-party sellers are (correctly) stating that the timing of the inventory cleanup is not really good, with the holiday shopping season in full swing and all. Could such drastic changes on this area of Amazon's website cause unknown glitches at a time when sales are everything?
With Black Friday coming up a week from tomorrow, many sellers probably don't want any changes at all to the way Amazon Marketplace operates -- something that makes perfect commerce sense. But past this holiday season, the inventory management of third-party goods needs to be a priority for the e-tailer. The way it presents many book items from outside sellers is anything from world class right at this moment.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-15-2007 @ 8:03PM
Brockage said...
I'm out of step as usual I guess, but I hate to see the clean up of vendors. When one has choices of book sources, then location and consequently quick shipping can occur for gift purchases. But I'm sure managing a shifting inventory of vendors isn't much fun or very efficient either, so the "new, improved" Amazon is bound to take place. Oy.
11-16-2007 @ 3:50AM
Alex Esguerra said...
Just a clarification from a small third party seller's view point, we had just been through a lot of changes lately as to Seller's pages, website and policy changes. Plus, comparatively as we all know that the sales for the season is not as good as in the past years. This is why there are some worried sellers out there that are not too comfortable with more changes. But in the long run, having been in the Amazon Marketplace community through the years, we know that change is very integral in getting more market dominance. In the end, we are behind Amazon as we know that they are looking for overall success for third party sellers as we gear now towards selling more products side by side with bookselling.
11-23-2007 @ 2:14PM
simon thomas said...
The problem is that Amazon started letting subscribed sellers create product pages (good idea), but did nothing to police it. So sellers started creating duplicate pages to avoid the sometimes 100s of minimum price offers on oversupplied books, or fly under the radar of other sellers auto-repricing software.
The clean up will have no effect unless Amazon also start taking action against sellers who do this.
This is basically Marketplace in a nutshell: great initial idea, very little attention to the logic of its subsequent development.