The Ultimate Guide To Monitoring Amazon Competitor Prices

Amazon is a deceptively complex place to sell. It’s a competitive market with multiple sellers competing for prime positions on product pages. One of the most influential levers they can pull is product pricing, which makes the pricing landscape on Amazon ever shifting and highly dynamic. 

Sellers who want to succeed in the long term must continuously stay informed on competitor pricing information, adjusting where necessary to find the optimal price — one that competes without sacrificing profit.

Established sellers and enterprise brands alike use competitor pricing data to understand market conditions, protect margins, maintain control of the Featured Offer (Buy Box), and stay profitable. 

To do all of this well, long-term, and at scale, they’re turning to automated pricing intelligence solutions.

Why competitor pricing matters for profitability in ecommerce

Competitor price monitoring is vital for any brand or seller to achieve long-term profitability in ecommerce, especially on Amazon, and here’s why:

The link between pricing intelligence and profitability

If you want to maximize your profits (and who doesn’t?), you’ll need to stay competitive on price and protect your profit margins. Competitor pricing intelligence is foundational because it reveals the first part of the equation: where you stand with the competition. 

It also helps brands adjust more effectively to broader market factors, like shifts in supply and demand that lead others to raise or lower prices. 

The dangers of price wars and short-term discounting

In retail, there’s almost always pressure to undercut competitors and win on price. But brands and sellers face real limits in how far they can push this. Over time, price wars and short-term discounting can lead to diminished brand value, shrinking margins, and lower profitability. It’s essential to avoid this kind of race to the bottom.

In contrast, successful sellers use pricing intelligence to identify where they can adjust their own prices to remain competitive without sacrificing substantial profits.

How competitor pricing impacts the Amazon Featured Offer (Buy Box)

The key to winning sales on Amazon is to capture and retain possession of the Featured Offer section. Formerly called the Buy Box, this is the box at the top of most product pages with the Buy Now and Add to Cart buttons in it. 

Capturing the Featured Offer is crucial because the vast majority of shoppers don’t even look at other offers.

Amazon’s algorithm evaluates many factors when deciding which seller to feature here, including shipping speed, previous seller performance metrics, and even stock levels. 

But the most important factor by far is price. For the most part, the lowest-priced option from a reputable seller offering fast shipping will be the Featured Offer. So brands and sellers need to know what the competition is doing. 

Key pricing strategies for maintaining profitability on Amazon

All else being equal (in terms of product, shipping time, and seller performance), your Amazon pricing strategy is the difference-maker in staying profitable and visible on Amazon. That said, here are six effective pricing strategies your brand can implement to remain competitive.

Dynamic pricing to match demand fluctuations

Dynamic pricing is the norm for many items on Amazon, with automatic, AI-driven repricing tools doing the grunt work in most cases. These tools allow sellers to adjust their prices in real time based on a range of factors (like demand, seasonality, and competitor activity).

Dynamic pricing isn’t right for every product or product type—luxury products and those with minimum advertised price (MAP) policies in place should never drop below certain thresholds, for example. But, depending on what you sell, dynamic repricing can be a key strategy to remain competitive without destroying your profit margins for no meaningful gain.

Maintaining premium pricing without losing sales

One way to keep from getting caught in a race to the bottom is to avoid trying to compete there. Yes, consumers are highly price-conscious, but they’re also interested in value. If your products offer unique value propositions that cheaper competitors can’t match, then premium pricing may be a viable option.

Emphasize product quality and brand reputation to maintain premium product prices. If what you’re offering is actually better (or even just looks substantially better) than the competition’s, then price becomes less of a deciding factor.

High-quality listings are key here — use A+ content where you can, and focus on brand storytelling rather than just raw product specs and features. These tactics can help to justify higher price points, helping you maintain premium pricing without sacrificing sales.

Strategic discounting and promotional pricing

Everyone still loves a discount, but the key is to be strategic in how you discount, rather than reactionary. Well-timed discounts can boost sales and profits while protecting margins and brand perception. 

Amazon is an ideal marketplace for this in a sense, with several mechanisms for time-limited offers. Lightning Deals, coupons, and limited-time discounts are all great tools for increasing sales without triggering price wars or long-term price declines.

MAP pricing enforcement and reseller control

Minimum advertised price (MAP) policies are a smart move for many brands, especially premium ones with luxury products. As the name suggests, these policies set a limit on how low advertised prices from third-party sellers can go. 

MAP policies can discourage or even prevent unauthorized price drops, protecting profitability and brand value. But enforcing MAP policies is largely up to brands, so tracking third-party sellers and unauthorized resellers is essential if you want to go after the ones that aren’t playing by the rules. 

Competitor price benchmarking and market positioning

Brands can also use a competitor price monitoring tool for benchmarking, which helps them identify their market positioning in terms of price. By understanding the pricing of their nearest competitors, brands can set prices more precisely, maximizing profit while staying competitive.

Leveraging historical data for long-term pricing strategy

Retail is a long game. Quick wins today might be attractive, but long-term sustainability should be the ultimate goal. Past pricing trends can help brands make stronger long-term pricing decisions and resist the temptation to react too aggressively to every short-term shift.

Seasonality, demand cycles, and even promotions can all affect prices and inform a long-term pricing strategy. Monitoring these elements for your own brand and your competition can help you strategically adjust pricing to sustain profitability and brand value. From there, you can use dynamic pricing tools to adjust prices without undercutting margins or violating MAP policies.

When to adjust pricing based on competitor trends

Brands and sellers monitor competitor pricing trends so they can take action when necessary — but not every single change from a competitor demands a re-evaluation of your pricing strategy. 

So how do you decide what qualifies as a reason to adjust? Watch for these four competitor trends:

Competitor stockouts and supply chain issues

One of the best times to increase prices without losing sales? When the competition can’t deliver, but you can. 

When competitors run out of stock or encounter supply chain snarls, even their loyal customers may turn to you to get what they need. (To be clear, we’re not endorsing price gouging—we’re talking localized supply chain or stockout challenges, not endemic ones.) 

Track stock levels across the market and run regular competitor analyses to identify and take advantage of these opportunities as soon as they arise.

Seasonal pricing shifts and demand fluctuations

Peak sales periods, like Black Friday and Prime Day, are also important times to adjust pricing. To take full advantage of the busiest seasons, you’ll need aggressive yet strategic pricing adjustments — but that doesn’t always mean dropping your prices.

While these pricing adjustments often include significant discounts, especially for low-cost, high-competition products, you may be able to maximize your profits with price bumps on high-demand and/or luxury products.

Buy Box performance and pricing adjustments

The Buy Box (or Featured Offer) is the most important battleground in the Amazon universe. Sellers and brands that control this element capture the vast majority of sales — 83% by some estimates!

So losing the Featured Offer is an important reason to adjust pricing. If you’re roughly equal on other factors (shipping speed, customer satisfaction, stock levels), then undercutting the current Featured Offer winner may be the key to recapturing that space.

But again, strategy is important here. Analyzing your Featured Offer win rate over time can help you maintain sales velocity while avoiding unnecessary price drops.

Changes in competitor pricing strategy

Finally, it’s a good idea to monitor competitor pricing patterns, watching for evidence that they’ve changed their pricing strategy — you may need to switch up your own pricing strategy in response. However, if you’re a big brand, it’s also a way to quickly identify and take action on sellers who are dropping below MAP pricing. 

Either way, Jungle Scout’s pricing intelligence tool can help you determine when it’s time to match or undercut competitor prices and when it’s time to hold steady at premium pricing. 

And enterprise brands can access Jungle Scout Cobalt Market Intelligence, which includes even more powerful competitive benchmarking tools, along with insights into market share and consumer demand.

For established sellers: What to consider when monitoring competitor pricing

Established ecommerce sellers and enterprise brands have much different goals and strategies when it comes to monitoring competitor pricing. So, in the next few sections, we’ll take a closer look at the needs of each — starting with the elements individual sellers and small ecommerce businesses should focus on.

Price tracking for direct competitors

As an individual seller or small brand, you’ll be dealing with direct competitors — rivals selling the exact same products under the same Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) you’re using. 

Individual products get an ASIN, not individual seller listings, so everyone’s competing for the same coveted Featured Offer on each product page.

This means you’ll need to monitor competitor pricing at the ASIN level for every individual product. If that sounds like a lot of work, well, you’re right — if you’re doing it manually. 

This is where tools like Jungle Scout’s Competitor Intelligence tool shine. Competitor Intelligence allows sellers to automatically track price fluctuations of direct competitors at the ASIN level and adjust accordingly.

Finding the balance between competitiveness and profit margins

Balanced pricing is an ongoing challenge. Price products too high, and you won’t sell enough (and will likely lose Featured Offer control). But price products too low, and your margins suffer, threatening long-term viability. There’s no easy answer here, but there are tools that can help. 

Jungle Scout’s Sales Analytics tool helps sellers see the complete picture, including both profitability and competitiveness (considering competitor pricing trends). With Sales Analytics, sellers can make informed, data-backed decisions instead of relying on guesswork and business sense alone.

Using automated repricing tools effectively

AI-driven repricing tools are a great addition to any seller’s repertoire. These automated tools allow you to stay price-competitive without constant manual adjustments. With the right configuration, AI-driven repricing can also respect MAP policies, not dropping lower than those thresholds.

Jungle Scout’s real-time competitor tracking feature provides the data sellers need to adjust prices strategically — without engaging in a race to the bottom. And the platform’s AI-driven repricing tools can free you up to focus on growing your business, not manually tinkering with prices.

Monitoring price trends for product lifecycle management

Nothing lasts forever — especially in sales. (Just ask the folks behind Beanie Babies.)

In the world of ecommerce, this means that sellers don’t (and shouldn’t!) stock the same products forever. Fads come and go, competitive landscapes shift, and consumer tastes change. The trick for sellers is to ride the right waves without getting stuck with unwanted inventory.

Competitive price monitoring tools like Jungle Scout’s historical price tracking help here as well, giving you the insights you need to determine when to increase or decrease pricing or stock of an item, as well as when it’s time to discontinue a product. 

For enterprise sellers: What to consider when monitoring competitor pricing

Enterprise sellers have different and more complex needs when it comes to monitoring competitor pricing. So let’s look at the top four areas to consider — and how Jungle Scout Cobalt, our enterprise platform, enables your brand to accomplish more, faster.

Category-wide pricing intelligence for large catalogs

Tracking pricing at the ASIN level is tough enough when you have just a handful of products. But many enterprise sellers have thousands of ASINs to worry about. That kind of scale takes a different approach.

Cobalt’s Digital Shelf Analytics is an incredibly powerful pricing intelligence solution for enterprise-sized catalogs. This tool provides pricing intelligence at scale, giving you the capability to monitor and understand pricing trends across entire categories.

Custom pricing analytics and data-driven decision-making

At the enterprise level, there’s more going into pricing decisions than just small fluctuations from individual sellers, and data is the map that shows the right way forward. Enterprise brands also approach analytics differently, using bulk data analysis and reporting to inform pricing decisions at both macro and micro levels. 

Cobalt’s pricing and market insights give enterprise sellers the data and information they need to predict market trends, adjust pricing at scale, and align strategies with consumer demand.

Aligning pricing strategy with retail partners and distributors

Enterprise sellers typically don’t sell exclusively on Amazon. Instead, they operate in numerous channels, working with wholesalers, retailers, distributors, and multiple marketplaces.

Each new channel or partner adds another layer of complexity, and enterprise brands must coordinate pricing between all parties. MAP policies are helpful for the sales end of the chain, but a number of processes need to be optimized before products ever get to that stage. 

Cobalt also includes tools that can help brands track MAP compliance and unauthorized seller activity, giving large enterprises the data they need to ensure consistency across multiple sales channels.

Tracking competitor promotions and brand-wide pricing trends

Enterprise brands also track promotional trends across categories and competitors to determine when to launch price-driven campaigns. Again, manual tracking across a catalog with thousands of items is impractical, if not impossible. 

Large-scale sellers need tools that can track categories and items automatically — and that’s exactly what Cobalt offers via market-wide competitor benchmarking. 

With Cobalt, you can see the complete picture of how your competition is using price reductions, discounts, and promotions to capture market share. Armed with this knowledge, you can respond to those competitor moves — or, better yet, you can form your own proactive approach that maneuvers around what your competitors are doing.

Turning pricing data into a profitability strategy: Our top tips

Pricing data is an essential ingredient of any profitability strategy — but data alone does not a strategy make. Use these three tips to bridge that gap and build a strategy that is consistently competitive and sustainably profitable.

Identify pricing trends that signal profit opportunities

Competitor data can reveal opportunities for unique profits. For example, a competitor may be forced to raise prices due to a supplier issue that isn’t affecting you, giving you a unique window for especially profitable and competitive pricing. 

Or, as a seller, you may stumble upon an unexpected wholesale deal that enables you to undercut competitors without hurting your profit margins. These and a hundred other scenarios are happening daily, and often, the identifying signals are hiding in available competitor data.

Align pricing strategy with advertising and promotions

Pricing strategy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Numerous other factors constantly impact pricing, including promotion opportunities like Lightning Deals or seasonal discounts. Many profitable sellers also run Amazon PPC campaigns and may align pricing changes with those campaigns.

In other words, don’t divorce advertising and promotions from pricing strategy. Whatever you’re doing in one should affect or inform the other.

Use pricing insights to forecast revenue and profitability

Last, sellers can use both past pricing history and current pricing insights to look forward, predicting future revenue and profitability. Predictive analytics tools can estimate what effects a pricing change will have, and historical seasonal data can give sellers a better idea of how upcoming seasonality will impact revenue.

Build a profitable pricing strategy on Amazon with Jungle Scout

Amazon’s vast customer pool is an unmatched opportunity in many markets — one that’s well worth pursuing. But with such intense competition for visibility and Featured Offer control, it can be a complex place to sell. Regular competitor analysis and price monitoring are key, but you’ll need the right tools to do it effectively.

Jungle Scout is the industry leader in Amazon competitor and pricing intelligence for sellers. Over 1 million established sellers rely on our platform to build effective pricing strategies and drive growth. And for enterprise brands, Jungle Scout Cobalt unlocks an unprecedented level of power and granular control.

Together, they’re the most comprehensive tools in existence for Amazon pricing intelligence.