Winning the Buy Box without Undercutting
So we’ve been trading for just under 3 months and have despatched near 400 orders with 21 ratings/4.7 stars. However… we are in a competitive market with anywhere from 3-10 well established sellers on each of our listings. To get started we undercut our competitors to a point where we’re barely breaking even. But now that we ‘feel’ a little more established, I would like to raise our prices and start making a profit. This will mean we will be the same or a little more expensive (<5%) than competitors. Will our sales die a death or will we be still entitled to an acceptable percentage of the buy box?
5 replies
Seller_esvgLzKXw2YAl
Nobody really knows how the buy box works.
A lot will fight constantly to get the lowest price and the buy box.
penny battles etc are so frequent it’s silly. Plus many sellers that come along, never work out the profit margins properly and consequently sell at silly prices. Though they do soon disappear.
I personally try not to cut the margins to the bone, it just isn’t worth it.
But as to whether or not you will still get the buy box, that’s another question entirely.
It depends on several things. How well your lines are stocked. The price. Feedback etc.
So unless you vastly increase the price, you should still get it, but do expect less sales.
It’s very difficult to know. All you can really do, is simply to give it a try and see what happens.
After a while you tend to be able to balance sales against profit a lot more easily.
Seller_2BrPSydGy6oyq
Many sellers I see with the buy box are higher priced compared to others, so it’s can’t be a major factor, but continuing to sell at a loss, or no profit is not viable longer term, so increase your prices and see what happens to sales.
Your seller metrics are more likely to play a more key role in buy box selection.
Seller_7l3ef6gH7v0cN
Thanks for the feedback. I was just thinking along the lines of whether I should continue current strategy for another little while - until I build a stronger profile. Agree, It’s certainly a foolish strategy in the long term. I’ll give it shot in the coming days and see how we fare out.
Is raising cost of delivery instead instead of price a bad strategy/frowned upon?
For instance some of competitors have free delivery / higher prices, others have very low prices (below cost) with very high delivery costs.
Seller_saK5Ah2SaNYjL
You won’t get the buy box for the first 90 days, no matter what you do. Just bide your time. Don’t undercut until 90 days has passed as it will be pointless.
When we started no one else was on the listings (we only sell our own branded products) and we still didn’t get the buy box.
