How does FBA impact Amazon sales, vs FBM?

eCommerce and Retail Talk
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I’m 100% sure that everyone in this forum will agree that Prime-eligibility impacts sales on Amazon, without a doubt.
My question is on the data & anecdotes to support this.
What have you seen in terms of a “before/after” in switching items from FBM to FBA? (Also could apply to SFP now that option is returning). Relevant data points like overall sales, overall conversion rate, ad conversion rate, organic ranking, etc.

Some brands still don’t get it. I’d like to prove this point, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

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Yes @KiriMasters - it’s a good question. Would love to hear @Tim_Reilly take on this.

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This is definitely a YMMV area, as there are apparently more factors at play than just the fulfillment method, even when the price is EXACTLY the same and the estimated delivery date is EXACTLY the same.

A pretty big chunk of our sales dollars (and we’ve been a 9-digit Amazon business for 4+ years) are for items sold under MAP policies. Here’s what we’ve seen:

  1. Amazon has it 1P: They win the Buy Box if EDD is the same. Full stop.
  2. FBA Seller showing same EDD as SFP Sellers: FBA Seller wins the BB.
  3. Multiple FBA Sellers showing the same EDD or multiple SFP Sellers showing the same EDD: We’ve yet to truly decipher how Amazon is picking the BB winner here. I know many of the theories around amount of inventory in FBA, amount of feedback, feedback %, total GMV, etc. I’ve seen too many variations to believe any one of those factors is decisive.
  4. SFP Seller vs. MFN Sellers: SFP wins for same EDD.

Basically 1P > FBA > SFP > MFN when price and EDD are the same. This means we generally don’t bother with FBA unless there are a) other FBA Sellers at our price or b) there are enough SFP Sellers that we aren’t winning a high enough share of the Buy Box.

I should also mention that our top-selling products are generally available via SFP from DCs in CA, NV, CO, TX, IL, KY, NJ, and FL, meaning our 2-Day ground shipping footprint covers 99% of the US population (we literally don’t reach something like 30 zip codes). Someone with much smaller SFP footprint might find they either need to include 2-Day Air shipping or that FBA is more important.

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