How a price is decided

Before you build a strategy it helps to know the order Repricer works in, from the competing prices it reads to the price it finally sends back out.

Repricer works out one selling price for one of your listings, then does it again the next time something moves. It reads what your competition is charging, applies the strategy on that listing, pushes the answer inside the limits you set, and sends the result to the sales channel.

What comes out is one number and one sentence. The number goes into the Target column of your listings table until the channel takes it. The sentence is the Reason on pricing activity, and it names what your price was measured against and what moved it.

The parts of that calculation are set in two places. Your strategy is one, built in a wizard you open from Strategies in the sidebar. Your listing is the other, opened from Listings in the sidebar and filled in on its Pricing tab. This page puts every part in the order it runs, because a price you did not expect is almost always a later part undoing an earlier one.

The order it works in

Every price goes through the same nine parts, in the same order, whatever you sell and wherever you sell it. Several of those parts can end the calculation on their own.

That is the whole calculation. The sections below take the parts one at a time, and you need none of them to read a price change on pricing activity.

What has to be true before anything is calculated

Four things are checked before any number is worked out, and each one ends the calculation by itself.

Two more things end the calculation by answering it instead. A Manual Price typed into the Selling Price card of the listing’s Pricing tab is published exactly as you typed it. Always price at MAP and Always price at MSRP, on the Safety Nets step of the strategy, lock your price to the number on the listing. All three skip your pricing mode, your limits and your rounding, and MAP wins when both locks are on.

After that your listing needs a strategy with both a target price and a pricing mode on it. It also needs the number your floor is built from. That is your cost when the floor is calculated for you, and your Minimum Price when you set it yourself.

A listing missing any of these reads Not working in the Repricing Status column of your listings table. What to fill in on each one is on listing and repricing status.

The price you are measured against

Nearly every strategy prices against something. On a marketplace that something is a competing offer, picked by Target price on the Pricing step of your strategy. Your choices there are the Buy Box Price, the lowest offer overall, the lowest offer of one fulfillment type, or the marketplace’s own price. On your own storefront it is the lowest of the pages you added on the listing’s Competitors tab, or your own cost.

Which offers count is narrowed before the lowest one is picked. Your listing only competes with offers in the same condition as yours, whether or not you turned filtering on. On an Amazon strategy the Filter competitors section narrows it further, by fulfillment type, seller rating, feedback count and location.

Sometimes there is nothing to measure against. No competitor data has arrived yet, the marketplace took the Buy Box off the item, or your filter removed every offer. No price reference, under Fallback behavior on the Safety Nets step, is where you say what happens then.

Pick Use lowest competitor when your target is the Buy Box Price. A marketplace can take the Buy Box off an item while your competition is still there. It is the one reference that can disappear on a listing that is otherwise busy. Pick Hold current price when you would rather nothing moved without a real number behind it.

What your pricing mode does with it

Pricing mode, on the same Pricing step, says how your price relates to the price you are measured against.

A strategy on your own storefront can price from your cost instead. You choose a return on that cost, a margin on the sale price, or a fixed profit per unit. There is no competing offer in that case, so your cost is what everything is worked out from.

On Amazon you can also say that competing against Amazon itself, or against a seller using FBA, uses a different mode from your usual one. When one of those takes over, the reason on your price change says a special rule was used instead of your default. Targets and modes goes through all of them.

What changes when the Buy Box is involved

Two branches only ever run where there is a Buy Box to win.

When you already have it, your price is left where it is. You are getting the sale, so undercutting yourself would only cost you margin. The one exception is a price that has ended up below your own floor, which is raised whatever else is true.

When you are trying to win it back, Beat by + Win Buy Box steps toward it. Beating your target is tried first. If your price is already at or below it and the Buy Box is still not yours, price is not the whole problem. Your price then comes down a small amount on each run until the Buy Box is yours. The amount is named in the reason on every one of those changes.

Once you have it, the same setting raises your price a little at a time. It never goes above the next cheapest offer, and it stops at the most you can charge and keep the Buy Box.

Raising stops on its own when you are the only offer, because the next cheapest offer is what caps the rise.

Where your limits come in

Whatever your mode calculates, the result is then pushed inside the limits on your listing and the ones your strategy adds. Floors raise it and caps lower it, one at a time. The caps are applied again at the end, so no floor can leave your price above one. All seven are listed in order on pricing on a listing.

Two things about that order are worth carrying around. A cap always beats a floor, so a Minimum Price above your MSRP on a strategy capping at MSRP comes out at the MSRP. And the lowest price Repricer will publish is the highest of all your floors put together. That is the number you read as your calculated minimum on the listing.

When the price can no longer do what you asked

Your limits can leave you a price that no longer does what your mode asked for. A Beat by strategy that ends at or above the price it was measured against is not beating anything. A Stay above by strategy pushed under that price by a cap is not staying above it. Can't compete by price, under Fallback behavior, is where you say what to do about it.

All three put the same Can't compete on price in the Reason column, so the setting changes what happens to your price and not what you are told about it.

What rounding does last

Rounding runs after everything above it. The Rounding step of your strategy can end every price in .99 or .95, snap it to a whole unit, or snap it to a step you choose.

Because it runs last, rounding moves your price a little away from the number your mode calculated. A price that changed for no other reason is still a price change.

Rounding is thrown away when the rounded price would fall below one of your floors or rise above one of your caps. The price from the part before it is kept instead. So rounding never breaks a limit, and what you give up is the ending you asked for.

Turn rounding off when a margin target has to be exact. Your strategy says the same thing on the Rounding step. It names whichever floor or cap you set.

What happens once the price is decided

A decided price is only sent when it is different from the price you have now, and different from one already sent and waiting for the channel. Here is where it shows up.

Those rows are written the moment the price is decided, which is before the channel has it. So a number in Target and a row on pricing activity tell you the price went out, not that a shopper is seeing it yet.

Two more prices are worked out from the one above, once it is settled. One is a business price, on an Amazon account with B2B pricing turned on. The other is the crossed-out compare price on your own storefront, covered on pricing on a listing. A calculated business price is never higher than your regular one.

What can stop a price going out

Most runs end with no price change, and that is the normal outcome for most of your listings most of the time. What is worth telling apart is which kind of nothing you are looking at.

The price was never calculated

These are the ones your listing tells you about. Repricing Status on your listings table reads Not working, and hovering that cell opens Repricing Issues with the cause and what to do about it. A listing you paused reads Paused, and one with a Manual Price on it reads Manual. Neither of those is a fault.

One case has no line of its own. A strategy with a Repricing schedule on it is simply outside its window, and prices start moving again when the window opens.

The price was calculated and nothing was sent

These leave Repricing Status reading Working, because your listing has everything it needs.

The first line is far and away the most common of the four.

The channel never took the price

A price can go out and not be applied. Sales channels confirm a price change on their own schedule, and a couple of hours is normal on Amazon. A Target that has not cleared usually means a channel catching up.

The same price is sent again a few times over roughly half a day. If it is still not applied after that, Target on your row is cleared. You get a warning naming the SKU and the price it tried, and asking you to check that listing on the channel yourself. Those warnings are on sync issues.

Why a run that changed nothing leaves no record

Reasons are written down with price changes. A run that decided to change nothing writes no row anywhere, so there is no history of the times your price was held. Last Repriced on your row is when your price last moved, and not when your listing was last looked at.

So the way to find out what a strategy would do right now is the Preview step of the strategy wizard. It estimates the effect on the listings you already have, before you save anything.

Where to go next