I notice that one of my top competitors has had the “Join Prime to buy this at $9.99” for over a year. See the offer with red underline in the screenshot below:
His $13.55 price is already the lowest in page one. He ranks second for the most relevant keyword which is very good. The item that ranks number one sells for $21.99. My item (ranks number 4 or 5) sells for $19.99. So you see the picture… I don’t understand why he would need to give discount and lower the price further from $13.55 to $9.99 for Prime member. Or did Amazon subsidize that discount? Any idea?
That is the million dollar question! There doesn’t always seem to be rhyme or reason to how Amazon subsidized discounts work AFAIK. I know at one point a seller on the OSFE wanted to disable them because the manufacture was angry with the seller for violating MAP. Not sure if they ever resolved that
As @Pepper_Thine_Angus notes, almost everything on Amazon is shrouded in fog.
I have had a number of discounts applied by Amazon as time has gone by. Normally they will just bring my items down to their price OR MAP when I am selling higher (which is mostly the case).
Then I should be tracking to see when they credit me for the amount of the discount but I haven’t bothered. There usually aren’t a lot of transactions there anyway!
