If you’re a B2B Amazon seller who hasn’t yet discovered the benefits of using the Amazon Business platform — the separate but connected offshoot of the popular e-commerce giant — you could be missing out on a ton of potential customers.
Read on to learn how the Amazon business platform works, and how you can ensure you get the best results for items listed on the platform.
What is Amazon Business?
Amazon Business is a global e-commerce marketplace that offers a unique set of benefits and solutions specifically for business buyers and sellers.
Launched in the US in spring 2015, the platform is a separate but connected arm of Amazon that combines the established and efficient customer experience of the consumer site with services tailored for B2B transactions.
Advantages for sellers using the platform include; the ability to reach a large new audience made up entirely of business customers, tailor business offers to that audience to increase sales conversions, reduced fees for large transactions, automated VAT invoicing and the ability to add a purchase order number to orders.
Joining the Amazon Business Program doesn’t incur any additional costs, and can be used in conjunction with the site’s dropshipping program, Fulfillment by Amazon.
How does Amazon Business help me gain exposure for my listings?
According to Amazon, more than half of the UK’s largest public companies rely on the site to deliver everyday items.
Amazon Business is currently expected to achieve $10 billion in annual global sales and offers more than 250 million products that meet business needs - from laptops to printer paper, from toner to tea and coffee. As a B2B seller, it makes sense to take advantage of this platform that is growing in size and scope, especially since there is no additional fee to enjoy the privilege.
What B2B features does Amazon Business offer?
Amazon reportedly spends over $13 billion per year on research and development, a fact evidenced by the platform’s compelling user experience, which has been refined and perfected over the years to maximize sales.
Amazon Business builds on the success of the company's B2C platform with unique B2B features, including volume purchase discounts, business pricing, integration with procurement software, and tax-free purchasing.
Can I use Amazon Business with the Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) program?
If you choose, Amazon can manage your Amazon Business sales using its direct sales program, Fulfillment by Amazon. This process involves shipping your products directly to an Amazon warehouse where they are stored, picked, packed, and shipped by Amazon. Additionally, the company handles many aspects of customer service, including refunds and returns.
Although it’s worth noting that Amazon Business reserves “Buy Box” space for orders fulfilled by their dropshipping program and orders handled directly by sellers, a practice that saves sellers warehousing costs for large amounts of inventory and relieves them of a time-consuming order fulfillment process.
For buyers using Amazon Business, the benefits are numerous. It's possible to set up a multi-user account to give your entire team buying power, but it's also possible to set restrictions on which products can be purchased at what price, giving you complete control over the purchasing process. Buyers can also enjoy huge discounts on multiple purchases, as well as access other key benefits such as pay-by-invoice, PO ordering, and pallet delivery.
How big is Amazon's business?
Amazon Business was launched in the United States in April 2015 and had global sales of more than $10 billion in 2018.
Amazon’s data now reveals how a growing number of companies of all sizes operating in the UK, including 16 of the 20 largest universities, are using Amazon to facilitate and manage their day-to-day expenditure on supplies and logistics.
More than 50% of FTSE 100 companies are now customers of Amazon Business, and the platform is active in the UK and US, as well as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan and India. In 2018, the market's annual sales exceeded $10 billion.
How to win the Buy Box with Amazon Business?
As with the Amazon consumer marketplace, the Amazon Business platform allocates “Buy Box” space to sellers based on an unknown but very important algorithm.
The Amazon Buy Box is the white box on the right side of a customer search results page where shoppers on the consumer site can click “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” to select an item. It’s also the primary retail space where most transactions on Amazon take place – if you’re a seller in the Buy Box, your item is typically the one that gets added to a shopping cart, or that he or she buys immediately.
Unlike the consumer platform, the Amazon Business site does not have a one-click “Buy Now” purchasing option for items in the Buy Box. Instead, buyers must add items to their cart before proceeding to the site's checkout process. This decision was most likely due to the fact that the vast majority of customers using commerce platforms will purchase multiple items in bulk, as opposed to buyers on consumer sites, who are more likely to purchase products individually.
How to secure the Buy Box on Amazon Business?
Just like with the consumer Buy Box, the algorithm Amazon uses to reward sellers for this space on the Business platform remains undisclosed.
Closer inspection of price points to match items in business and consumer markets shows that arrival pricing plays a more important role in awarding the Buy Box in the business market than it does in the consumer site (where variables such as whether an order was placed by Amazon or through Amazon are given higher weightings to merchants).
This means that if you can consistently outprice your competitors, you stand a much better chance of winning the Buy Box on business sites — a time-consuming, manual process that can be easily managed by using repricing software that automatically adjusts your item prices based on price changes from Amazon and other independent sellers to help you stay competitive.
Currently, many sellers list the same items on both the consumer and business platforms, and while a range of pricing software options are currently available on the Amazon consumer site, price changes on both the consumer and business marketplaces are often done manually – meaning sellers often miss out on buy box space.
Repricer.com is currently the only repricing software that can automatically adjust prices between the two Amazon platforms and is able to define the slightest difference between prices on the two platforms, which could be the difference in being in or near the buy box in a consumer marketplace. And directly win the Buy Box in the commercial market.
There is no "buy now" button on the commercial market, which also shows the importance of buying in bulk. Business Repricer's Quantity Rules take advantage of this by allowing users to set specific discounts for various quantities.
