New Amazon Reference Prices policy – ChannelX

There’s a new Amazon reference prices policy which aims to ensure that Prime Exclusive Discounts are genuine and offer a minimum discount of the regular selling price of a product.

What is a reference price?

In many product categories, you have the option of providing a recommended retail price (RRP) or a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) which is the recommended or suggested retail price of a product set by the manufacturer.

• The RRP that you provide must represent the price applied by you or other retailers or sellers outside of short-term discounts for the product in question.
• You also are responsible for ensuring that the RRP you provide to us remain current.

If you do not have an RRP that meets these criteria, provide a value of 0 when adding a new product. If Amazon cannot verify the list price that you provide, we may not use it. Also, if Amazon consider that an RRP or saving message displayed is misleading to customers, they reserve the right to stop displaying the RRP at any time to protect our customers.

Additionally, A ‘Was’ price may display in several places, including the product detail page, the deals page and search results for your products, to show savings to customers. A ‘Was’ price is determined using historic prices paid by customers for the product on Amazon, excluding sale prices.

Reference prices policy & Prime Exclusive Discounts

Now, to participate in Prime Exclusive Discounts, your product must display a reference price that indicates to customers the value of your offer.

The reference prices policy can apply to both a “was” price or a list price.

• On regular days, the Prime Exclusive Discount must be 5% lower than the reference price.
• During special events, such as Prime Day and Black Friday, Prime Exclusive Discounts must be 10% lower than the reference price.

It’s also worth noting that discounts must respect any legal minimum and maximum durations. For some countries this is a maximum of 30 calendar days. You need to allow intervals between discounts to ensure for what Amazon describe as ‘a good customer experience’.