Introduction: Policy adjustment at the end of the year and then stir up trouble
At the end of every year, Amazon will make a series of policy adjustments, and at the beginning of 2025, a series of new regulations for coupons will undoubtedly bring great challenges to the New Year's operating strategy of POD clothing sellers settled in Amazon. These changes have not only impacted the promotion approach of our POD clothing sellers, but also forced us to re-examine our entire marketing strategy. So, how does this policy affect us? And what to do about it? This article will delve into the specifics of these new rules and their impact on sellers, and provide strategies to deal with them.
Coupon challenge under Amazon's new rules
1. Coupon updates presentation rules
Recently, Amazon made a major update to its usage rules for Coupons, which require a discount of at least 5% off the lowest price a buyer paid for a Coupon in the last 30 days. This means that once Coupon is set, if Coupon is set again 30 days later, the discount rate must be reduced by 5% from the previous coupon. In addition, if the seller has a promotion within a certain period of time, then to set Coupon, you must reduce the price by 5% from the previous campaign.
This new rule puts tremendous pressure on sellers who rely on Coupons to attract traffic, forcing sellers to make a difficult trade-off between profit and traffic. Recently, a large number of sellers encountered errors when setting coupons, which seriously affected their promotional strategies. The seller may choose to suspend the setup of Coupon to avoid the trouble of frequent price adjustments. Or they can give up Coupon and sell it at a reduced price. However, both options have their limitations, and sellers need to find the best balance in the fierce market competition.
2. Coupon affects the Deal price
To make matters worse, an Amazon manager recently informed the seller that starting January 16, 2025, the price of the Deal will be based on the discounted price after the use of coupons. This means that when setting the Deal price, the seller must take into account the discounted price of the Coupon in the past 30 days.
Since its launch in 2017, Coupon has been popular with sellers thanks to its dedicated promotional traffic entry page and a prominent green TAB on the search page. Through Coupon, sellers can attract more traffic and orders. In addition, Coupon was not a price reduction in nature before, so it did not affect the lowest price of the Deal.
However, after the implementation of the new regulations, this change is undoubtedly a bolt from the blue for sellers. The discounted price of Coupon will be included in the price calculation of the Deal Coupon. If the discount of Coupon is too strong, it will directly affect the price of the subsequent application of the Deal Coupon. The seller should not only guarantee the profit, but also ensure that the discount is enough to attract consumers, and avoid the loss of market competitiveness due to the high price of the Deal. This change requires sellers to fully restructure their operating strategies to adapt to the new market environment.
Coping strategies: How sellers deal with the new Coupon regulations
1. Review the new Coupon policy
Sellers need to re-evaluate the range and frequency of Coupon offers to ensure that they attract consumers without unduly harming their profit margins. You can consider adopting a phased step preferential strategy, setting coupons of different amplitude in different time periods to balance traffic and profits.
2. Diversified promotion methods
In addition to Coupon, sellers can also try other promotional means, such as price discounts and buy-free activities. Although these methods may not be as intuitive as Coupon, they can still increase sales and traffic to a certain extent. At the same time, sellers can also combine external social media and other channels to promote and expand the coverage of promotional activities.
3. Strengthen market monitoring and price adjustment
Sellers need to pay close attention to market dynamics and competitors' pricing strategies in order to flexibly adjust their own prices and promotions. Data analysis tools can be used to predict and analyze market trends in order to adjust operational strategies in a timely manner.
4. Multi-platform layout
Given the frequent and unpredictable policy changes on Amazon's platform, sellers can consider expanding their business to other cross-border platforms to reduce the risk of dependence on a single platform. With a multi-platform layout, sellers can spread their risks and improve the stability and sustainability of their overall business.
5. Focus on competitors
Sellers not only need to pay close attention to the latest developments of Amazon platform, timely adjust their pricing strategies and promotion plans to cope with the rapid changes in the market; At the same time, it is also necessary to strengthen the analysis and research of competitors to understand their pricing strategies and promotional means in order to occupy a favorable position in the competition.
Supportive strategy: Prime Exclusive Discounts integrated into the Price Discounts tool
Amazon recently announced that it will be “ Prime Exclusive Discounts” Tool integration to “ Price Discounts” This change will become effective on January 7, 2025. However, the change has caused dissatisfaction among sellers, as they will no longer be able to use certain features in Prime Exclusive Discounts, such as bulk uploads. Some sellers said that the bulk upload feature is critical for managing large volumes of ASins, and the new tool does not yet support this feature. In addition, sellers have expressed concerns about other functional differences such as eligibility criteria for the new tool.
Amazon says the updated Price Discounts tool supports Prime exclusive discounts and all customer discounts, and offers the ability to search catalogs, manage global discounts, and view performance metrics. Amazon is also reminding sellers that any Discounts created in the Prime Exclusive Discounts Tool will last until the end of the booking period, but will no longer be able to create new discounts in the tool as of January 1, 2025.
Conclusion
The new regulations of Coupon updated by Amazon are like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it may encourage sellers to reduce their excessive reliance on price wars and promote market competition to a more healthy and diversified direction. But on the other hand, the new regulations may also trigger a new round of price competition, making sellers fall into a more intense price war vortex, thus real “ Yield profit ” Or “ Cut meat ” For Amazon users. Therefore, we POD clothing sellers not only need to pay close attention to the latest developments of the Amazon platform, timely adjust their pricing strategies and promotion plans to cope with the rapid changes in the market; At the same time, it is also necessary to strengthen the analysis and research of competitors, understand their pricing strategies and promotional means, in order to occupy a favorable position in the increasingly fierce stock competition.
FAQ (FAQs)
1. Q: What are the specific requirements of Coupon in Amazon's new regulations?
A: The new rule requires that Coupon must be discounted by at least 5% from the lowest purchase price in the past 30 days. If a Coupon needs to be set again after 30 days, the discount must be reduced by 5% from the previous offer. In addition, if a seller has conducted a promotion within a certain period of time, if a coupon is set, The price of POD clothing must be reduced by 5% on the basis of the last campaign, which means that it is difficult for us to adjust the price by Coupon in the future. It also means that the use of Coupon needs to be more careful to avoid the operational risks caused by the low price.
2. Q: How will the new rules affect the price of deals?
A: From January 16, 2025, the price of the promotion will be based on the discount price after the use of coupons, which will affect the seller's decision when setting the Deal price. Meanwhile, the Amazon manager recently informed the seller: From January 16, 2025, the price of the Deal will be based on the discounted price after the use of the Coupon. This means that when setting the Deal price, the seller must take into account the discounted price of the Coupon in the past 30 days, which makes the transaction price more important, and also makes the operation of Amazon POD clothing sellers more difficult.
3. Q: How should sellers deal with the new Coupon regulations?
A: Sellers need to re-evaluate the discount range and frequency of Coupon, diversify their promotional methods, strengthen market monitoring and price adjustment, and consider the layout of multiple platforms. If we want to use Coupon and participate in the Deal according to Amazon's new regulations, it will inevitably lead to the lowest price going down all the way until there is no profit at all. However, without Coupon and Deal activities, the accumulation of sales will be greatly affected, which will greatly increase the difficulty of our operation. Fortunately, our competitors are the same as us. Therefore, we need to make more preparations instead of putting all our eggs in one basket. Is the most important thing.
4. Q: Why are sellers dissatisfied with the integration of Prime Exclusive Discounts into the Price Discounts tool?
A: Sellers are dissatisfied with the lack of functions after the integration of the new tool, especially the batch upload function, which is crucial for managing a large number of ASIN, and the integrated tool no longer has this function, resulting in some sellers are dissatisfied with this, but this is obviously a countermeasure of Amazon platform to the sellers of goods. It also reflects the Amazon platform's support strategy for refined operation, and for us POD clothing sellers, because ASIN is obviously too much, the loss of this function is bound to have an impact on us, but obviously it will not be too big.
5. Q: What's new with Amazon's updated Price Discounts tool?
A: Updated Price Discounts tool supports Prime exclusive discounts and all customer discounts, and provides search catalogs, manage global discounts and view performance indicators and other functions, specific POD clothing sellers can click to see some, will be more specific.
