Product intelligence firm 360pi's recent report, Holiday Success: Amazon Relying on a Data-Powered Holiday, takes a close look at a sample of more than 8,800 items from Amazon’s best-seller listings for available products only, with price comparisons in early November.
Other categories that saw a high level of price dynamism were electronics and clothing – both highly contested gift categories.
“Amazon’s price dynamism on its best-selling products is particularly interesting in comparison to the retailer’s typical level of price dynamism. For example, we recently reported that 17 percent of the larger toys category was repriced daily, which is only a fraction of the dynamism we observed for their best-selling toys this month,” said Jenn Markey, vice president of marketing, 360pi.
This highly price-dynamic category also has the highest average number of marketplace sellers offering each product. With just a few national brands and character licenses dominating the best sellers in toys, this is one of the most aggressively competitive categories. However, Amazon is still able to offer a number of exclusive items in the popular lines.
“Amazon has built their business around a highly sophisticated data-focused retail model, and no products get more of their attention than their best sellers,” said Markey. “The observed correlation between the number of marketplace sellers and Amazon’s price dynamism for their best-selling toys, provides additional insight into the e-commerce giant’s tactics and strategies during the holidays and beyond.”
