Many third-party sellers start on Amazon as resellers and evolve into brand owners, according to Ian Simpson, the marketplace’s Vice President of Selling Partner Tools and Services – and it wants companies to think of Amazon as a place where they can build their brand.
Amazon announced new tools for brands during the first day of its 2-day Amazon Accelerate seller conference, releasing the news into three buckets:
1) New innovations for brands that sell on its marketplace.
2) A Search Analytics Dashboard for sellers to gain insights into the search performance of their products.
3) A “Product Opportunity Explorer” for sellers to identify new products to sell.
Simpson told EcommerceBytes, “Amazon is a great place for brands, particularly entrepreneurs and small and medium sized businesses who are looking to launch their brand or new products, easily reach millions of customers, and rapidly grow their sales.”
Referring to Wednesday’s announcements, Simpson said Amazon is offering brands significantly enhanced capabilities – including more ways to connect with customers.
One feature that Amazon seems to be pushing hard is the Brand Referral Bonus. When companies direct traffic to Amazon, they earn a bonus – on average, 10% of the purchase price of any of the brand’s products purchased by the customer over the following two weeks. (Read more in our story from July.)
Another tool Amazon touted on Wednesday: its Customer Review Resolution tool, which enables brands to provide enhanced customer service when they identify a frustrated customer who leaves a negative product review. Amazon said that since the tool’s launch in June, brands have offered enhanced support on more than 200,000 orders per month. (See this October 13th article for sellers’ reaction.)
The Search Analytics Dashboard is a new tool that will provide brands with insights from the search performance of their products. It enhances the existing Amazon Brand Analytics suite of aggregated data reports, which includes reports for repeat purchase behavior, market basket analysis, item comparison, alternate purchase behavior, and demographics. The Search Analytics Dashboard will be available in the US in early 2022.
“Virtual Bundles” is a feature with which we hadn’t been familiar. It gives brands who use Amazon’s fulfillment service the opportunity to offer between two to five complementary products as a bundle without needing to pack the items together before sending them to Amazon’s fulfillment centers. By offering a virtual bundle, brands can increase their order size, which can result in an sales lift of over 15% for bundled products on average.
On the eve of Amazon Accelerate, Amazon released data that revealed, among other factoids, that over 440,000 brands are enrolled in Brand Registry; and that in 2021, 100,000 brands joined Amazon’s US platform, with sales by brands up 60% year-over-year for the 12-month period ending June 30, 2021.
The emphasis on support and tools for brands could prompt third-party merchants to consider whether launching their own brands is feasible – and brands already on Amazon can check out all of the features announced on Wednesday in this press release.
While the focus of this week’s news was on brands that sell on Amazon, the company also announced a tool called Product Opportunity Explorer that provides sellers with information about what customers are searching for, clicking on, and buying – as well as not buying, which helps sellers “identify opportunities to launch new, high-potential products to serve unmet customer demand.” Amazon is initially testing Product Opportunity Explorer in a beta program, with plans to make the tool available to all sellers in 2022.
