AI-powered Amazon repricing software

Let’s start with a fun example. The superstar who actually came up with the concept of Game Theory is mathematical genius and slightly crazy, John Nash. In the movie “A Beautiful Mind,” his Hollywood biography, Nash (played by Russell Crowe), explains Game Theory with the example of seducing one or more women.

Nash uses the following example – if four men are in a bar with four women, they will likely all want to dance with the “hot blonde”, (Nash’s words not Seller Snap’s). If they all decide to pursue her, there is a significant chance that no one will end up dancing at all, because the other women don’t want to be second choice. The best-case scenario is that three men will sit lonely at the bar, and only one of the men will get to dance with their first choice.

Game Theory tells the men to each pick a different girl to dance with. This way, chances are high that all four women and all four men get to spend their evening together. No one feels like the second choice and no one gets rejected. Three men might not be dancing with their desired partner, but at least they are dancing.

If you always aim to win the Buy Box, then this will usually result in a price war. Other sellers will quickly react to your drop in price, and the Buy Box price will decrease. A race to the bottom is on.

To automate this repricing process, the majority of professional Amazon sellers are using some form of a repricing software. They apply complex rules or alternatively, use artificial intelligence machine learning; Game Theory repricing on Amazon in other words.

Today, you stand little chance of competing against other FBA sellers if you are not using some form of a repricing software. Amazon repricers change the price of your product continuously, which unfortunately becomes an impossible task when doing it manually. With that, come two more disadvantages:

1. Your repricing decisions quickly affect the repricing decisions of other sellers.
2. If you always aim to win or dominate the Buy Box, then this will most likely result in a price war.

By collecting data from Amazon – on pricing, for example, it’s possible to predict the behavioral changes of your competition. With a superior repricing tool that always seeks the optimal strategy for each Amazon listing, AI automatically applies the best approach for each specific situation.

The behavior of Amazon sellers using a rule-based repricer can be described as the seller trying to do what is best for them in the short term. However, they ignore the fact that selling on Amazon doesn’t just involve one cycle of price changes.

Seller Snap’s AI Amazon repricer will automatically apply the best strategy for each specific situation. When you sell on Amazon, your goal should be to get the Buy Box share you are “entitled” to, while keeping the price high, instead of racing to the bottom.

A competitor is matching your price:
Competitor’s strategy is to share the Buy Box with you and they are probably using a rule-based repricer, set to match the lowest FBA price. AI repricing on Amazon will find the highest rate that the competitor is willing to go and increases your price. You remain at that price, which results in sharing the Buy Box at the highest possible price. Other solutions often lead to losing the Buy Box or sharing it at a lower price.

A competitor behaves aggressively with repricing:
Let’s assume that the competitor’s strategy is to beat the lowest FBA price by $0.05 and they are probably using a rule-based repricer set to match the lowest FBA price. The competitor will always undercut your price by the exact amount that leads to them winning the Buy Box.
AI will mirror the behavior of the competitor by reducing the price until the reset point. This is usually the point at which you win the Buy Box 50% of the time. When this happens, the repricer will increase the price to your maximum. You will temporarily lose the Buy Box while waiting for your competitor to raise the price. Then the process will start again, ultimately resulting in the highest possible Buy Box price.

The Seller Snap platform offers an advanced AI solution for repricing on Amazon. In our opinion, AI-powered Game Theory repricing is the best solution to ensure optimal sales on Amazon. However, as with any AI product, there will be scenarios where AI is not the most suitable strategy. In this case, you might achieve better results by applying a simple rule-based repricer. This is why Seller Snap built a system that allows sellers to switch between AI and rule-based methods very quickly at all times.