B2B pricing

Amazon lets you sell to businesses at a different price, and a strategy can price that side of a listing on its own rules and its own limits.

Amazon Business is the side of Amazon where the buyer is a company. One product can carry two prices there at the same time: the one an ordinary shopper sees, and a separate business price for those buyers. B2B pricing is where you tell a strategy what that second price should be.

The business side has a market of its own. It has its own Buy Box and its own competing offers, and often far fewer sellers on an item. So the price that wins you the ordinary Buy Box wins you nothing on the business one. You get three ways to answer that. Price against the business market the way your strategy already prices against the ordinary one. Take a set discount off your regular price. Set one price per listing yourself and leave it there.

You get to all of it from Strategies in the left sidebar. Click the strategy you want in the table, then click B2B Pricing in the numbered row of steps across the top of the dialog that opens over the page. The step is only on a strategy built for an Amazon account enrolled in Amazon Business. It starts switched off, so nothing about your prices changes until you turn it on.

Before you start

What your role lets you do

Typing a business price or a business limit on a listing is a different permission, and an Editor has it. Roles are set in team, roles and permissions.

How to price for business buyers

1. 1

   Open the strategy

   Click Strategies in the left sidebar, then click the strategy you want in the table. On a new one, click Create strategy above the table instead.

2. 2

   Go to the step

   Click B2B Pricing in the numbered row of steps across the top of the dialog.

3. 3

   Turn business pricing on

   Turn on Enable B2B pricing for this strategy, the switch at the top of the step. The rest of the step appears underneath it.

4. 4

   Choose how the price is worked out

   Under the heading B2B pricing mode, click one of the four cards. Compete against B2B Buy Box is the one marked Recommended.

5. 5

   Say how hard to compete

   Under Competition strategy, click Beat by. Two fields open inside that card. Leave Type on Fixed ($) and type how far under the business Buy Box you want to be.

6. 6

   Give business orders a floor

   Under B2B minimum price source, click Calculate from cost, then type the profit you want into Minimum target.

7. 7

   Save it

   Click Update at the bottom right. On a strategy you are still building, click Next instead and finish the wizard.

That is the whole step. Every listing on the strategy gets a business price from the next time its regular price changes, and you read that price in the B2B Price column of your listings table.

Everything below takes the four modes one at a time, then the MAP and MSRP switches under them, then the order it all happens in. You need none of it for the flow above.

Every option in detail

The step is one column of settings, and how much of it you get depends on the mode you pick.

Turn business pricing on

Enable B2B pricing for this strategy is the switch at the top of the B2B Pricing step, and the rest of the step is hidden until you turn it on. Off is how every new strategy comes, and a strategy left that way sends Amazon one price, the same one every shopper sees.

Turning it off again later stops the Repricer working out a business price. It does not take the last one back off Amazon.

Choose how your business price is worked out

B2B pricing mode is the first heading under the switch, with four cards under it. Click one, and the settings that mode needs open below.

The two Compete against cards are the ones that watch the business market and move your price as it moves. Pick Compete against B2B Buy Box when you want the featured position on the business side. It is the card marked Recommended. Pick Compete against B2B Lowest Price when you want to be the cheapest business offer on the product, whoever is featured.

Pick Discount from regular price when business buyers should simply get a set discount. Your business price then moves whenever your regular price moves, and never on its own. You never have to think about who else is selling to businesses.

Pick Fixed Business Price when the number is yours to decide. It never moves, and it is the only mode that ignores every other setting on this step.

Compete against the business market

Competition strategy is the heading that appears under the mode cards once you pick either Compete against card. It says how far from the business market price you want to be, and it has three cards of its own. That market price is whichever one the mode card named, so it is the business Buy Box price on one and the cheapest business offer on the other.

Beat by and Stay above by open two fields inside the card, Type and Amount. Type is Fixed ($) or Percentage (%). A new strategy arrives on Fixed ($) with 0.01 in Amount, and switching Type to Percentage (%) puts 1 there instead.

Pick Beat by with a small amount. Undercutting by a cent is enough to be the cheaper offer, and every cent past that comes out of your own margin. Match is worth picking where you would rather not start a price war, and Stay above by where your listings sell on something other than being cheapest.

Give business orders a floor of their own

B2B minimum price source is the third heading down. It says where the lowest price you will publish to a business buyer comes from, with a card for each answer, and nothing is picked for you.

Pick Calculate from cost when you know your costs, because one profit target then covers every listing on the strategy and each floor moves on its own when a cost changes. Pick Set manually where the lowest price you will take from a business buyer has nothing to do with what the item cost you.

Calculate from cost opens B2B profit protection under it, with two fields. Metric is ROI or Profit Margin, and it decides what your percentage is measured against. Minimum target is the percentage itself, from 0 to 100, and it starts at 10. The price floor and ceiling covers how those two metrics differ and what each one gives you.

Your floor is your cost, plus the channel fee, plus your target. The line printed under those two fields leaves the fee out, so the floor you actually get is higher than the number on that line.

This floor is separate from the one on the Price Floor step, and the two never mix. A business order is held to this one, an ordinary order to that one, and you can ask for a smaller profit here than you do there.

Discount from your regular price

Discount from regular price opens two fields inside its own card, Type and Amount. Type is Percentage (%), which starts at 5, or Fixed ($), which starts at 1.00. A percentage takes anything from 0 to 100.

The discount comes off the new regular price, the one that run has just decided, and not off the price the listing had before it. So a run that moves your regular price down moves your business price down with it, by the same discount, on the same run.

There is no separate floor on this mode and no Competition strategy, because the price is a straight subtraction from a number your strategy already worked out.

Give business buyers one price of your own

Fixed Business Price opens nothing else on the step, because the number is not a strategy setting. You type it on each listing, in the Fixed Business Price section of the Pricing tab, in a field called B2B Price. See pricing on a listing for the field and how it saves.

A listing with no B2B Price on it gets no business price at all, and nothing on the listing says so.

Hold your business price to MAP and MSRP

B2B Safety Nets is the last heading on the step, with four switches in it, and all four start off. None of them is a number you type here. They work on the MAP and the MSRP in the Manufacturer Pricing card of the listing’s Pricing tab. Those are the same two numbers your regular price is held to.

Pick Respect MAP for B2B to keep pricing normally with a floor under you. These four switches are set separately from the four on the Safety Nets step. So you can hold business buyers to your supplier’s MAP and let ordinary shoppers price freely, or the other way around. Safety nets covers the same four switches on your regular price.

A MAP higher than your regular price does not lift your business price above it. Your regular price is still the cap, and that is what goes out.

Limits

What business pricing cannot do

How your business price is decided

Your regular price is decided first, every time, and the business price is worked out from it afterward. That order is why a business price only moves on a run that moved your regular price. A change in the business Buy Box on its own does not move it.

The order the step works in

The two Always price switches skip rows 1 to 5 and keep 6 and 7, so what goes out is your MAP or your MSRP unless your regular price is lower. Fixed Business Price skips all seven.

When there is nothing to compete against

On the two Compete against modes, a listing whose business market has not been read yet starts from your regular price instead. Every row above still runs on it. So a business price equal to your regular price usually means there is no business market data on that product yet. It does not mean your settings did nothing.

The business market is read separately from the ordinary one, so a listing can have competitors on the Competitors tab and still have nothing on the business side.

Where your business price shows up

That Type column is only on the table once your organization has business price changes to show. An account that has just turned this on will not see it yet.

When something goes wrong

Why Next is gray

Next stays gray until the step has everything it needs, and hovering it tells you what is missing.

The whole step is optional. Turn Enable B2B pricing for this strategy back off and Next opens again, whatever you left half filled in.

A setting that changes nothing, with no message

The first three are fixed on the listing and not here. Fill in the MAP, the MSRP, the Unit Cost or the B2B Price on its Pricing tab and the setting starts working on the next run.

A business price that is not the one you asked for

A floor and the two business limits keep working after you change the mode. Build a strategy on Compete against B2B Buy Box, set a floor, and type a B2B Minimum Price on a listing. Switch the mode to Discount from regular price after that, and both are still applied to the discounted price.

The fields holding them are only on the listing while the strategy prices against the business market. To clear them, switch the mode back, save, clear the numbers on the listing, and switch it again.

Where to go next