Amazon Repricing Tool "Automate Pricing" — Setup and How to Use It

19 hours ago
4 min read

Price setting is an important factor in winning the Buy Box on Amazon. Amazon Seller Central also provides a tool that sets prices automatically. It's an extremely handy tool, so master it and get ahead of your rivals.

What is "Automate Pricing"?

Until now I'd been adjusting prices manually while watching my rivals' listing prices, but with this tool you can automatically adjust the price of target products in line with changes such as the Buy Box price.

1. You can create multiple pricing rules of your own

2. You can set the same price as the Buy Box, or slightly higher than the Buy Box

3. You can choose whether to target listings with the same fulfilment method (FBA or seller)

4. You can choose whether to target only sellers other than Amazon Retail

5. Setting a minimum and maximum price is required

How to use "Automate Pricing"

After signing in to Seller Central, choose "Automate Pricing" from the "Pricing" menu

This time we're creating our own custom rule, so click the "Create customised pricing rule" button

Selecting the rule type and rule name

Select the competitive Buy Box option.

Add a rule name under "Please name your rule." The upload tool (described later) didn't work when the rule name contained Japanese characters, so single-byte alphanumerics are the safe choice. Once entered, click the "Proceed to marketplace selection" button.

Selecting the marketplace

I only sell on the Japanese marketplace, so I chose "Amazon.co.jp" and clicked "Save and continue to pricing rule selection."

Defining the pricing rule

This is the heart of the rule setup.

Which pricing do you want Amazon to apply? Same as the Buy Box price: Choose this to set the same price as the current Buy Box. This is the one I chose. Stay a specified amount below the Buy Box price: Automatically sets a price the specified amount lower than the current Buy Box. You can specify either a concrete amount (e.g. ¥50 below the Buy Box) or a percentage (e.g. 2% below the Buy Box). If everyone set it to go below the Buy Box, a price-cutting race would happen automatically and things would get grim for sellers... Stay a specified amount above the Buy Box price: The reverse of the above. You can specify a concrete amount or a percentage in the same way. You won't get dragged into a discount war, but isn't it hard to win the Buy Box? Select the type of listing to compare against on Amazon. All listings on Amazon with a matching ASIN and condition: If you list as "new," you'll be compared against everything else listed as "new." Specific types of listings: This is where I specified my conditions. Only listings with the same fulfilment method: I mainly ship via FBA, so I regard FBA sellers as my rivals and wanted to compare only against FBA listings — so I ticked this. Only sellers other than Amazon Retail: I don't want to list on catalogues where Amazon Retail sells, but sometimes Amazon starts selling later.

Click the "Proceed to SKU selection" button

I handle a lot of products and want to manage them in bulk with a file, so I clicked the "Upload a file to manage SKUs" button

Bulk management using file download and upload

Click the "Download automate pricing file" button and get the file Flat.File.AutomatePricing.xlsx. Open the file and it explains how to use it — just enter as instructed.

SKU: Enter the SKU to be set automatically Minimum listing price: The lower bound of the automatically set price. Set it too low and you risk a loss; set it too high and rivals may take the Buy Box — so think it through carefully. Maximum listing price: The upper bound of the automatically set price. Selling high is never a bad thing, so you'd want to set the ceiling high. However, each catalogue has its own maximum, so entering an absurdly high figure gets rejected with an error. Country code: I sell on Amazon.co.jp, so enter "JP" Currency code: Enter "JPY" Rule name: Enter the name of the automate-pricing rule you created. Note that full-width characters cause an error. Rule action: We're setting a new rule this time, so enter "START." Incidentally, when you want to stop the automatic setting, enter "STOP."

Once all fields are entered, save in "text" format. Note that it can't be uploaded as an Excel file.

Click the "Upload a file to manage SKUs" button.

Click "Upload automate pricing file" and select the text file you just saved.

The screen changes to uploading, so wait a while. Pressing the "Reload" button shows whether the status has changed. When the status becomes "Upload complete," it's done. Clicking the "Download processing report" link shows the processing results. Errors I hit "The standard pricing rule with the specified rule name could not be found. Symbols cannot be used in rule names. Check the rule you configured on the automate pricing rule page, and if you used symbols, remove them from the rule name in the automate pricing tool." This occurred when I used full-width characters in the rule name. Once I wrote the rule name in single-byte alphanumerics, processing ran correctly. "'maximum-seller-allowed-price' exceeds the allowed value of ¥XX,XXX." It seems each catalogue has a ceiling determined from the current price. When I reset the values to the ceilings shown here and uploaded again, most were processed without problems, but a few produced the same error and couldn't be set. Entering an amount a few yen below the allowed value shown in the error completed the processing.