Buy Box and Out of Stock metrics are available for Amazon Business
In Q4 2020, Amazon quietly made replenishable out-of-stock (Rep OOS) and lost buy box (LBB) data available in Vendor Central for Amazon Business.
Vendor Central Sales Diagnostic reports can be filtered by Program: Amazon.com (Retail), Amazon Business, Amazon Fresh, and Prime Now. This filtering helps brands separately report on the performance of each program. However, Amazon provides much less data for the non-Retail programs because most of Amazon’s data comes from purchases made on Amazon.com and through the Amazon mobile app. To launch newer programs like Fresh, Amazon built completely new ordering and delivery technology that work better for perishable groceries than CPG.
Why the difference?
Different systems have different ways of measuring and recording customer activity, and the same metrics might not apply to both systems. For example, “lost buy box” only applies when there’s a buy box to compete for and a marketplace of sellers to compete for it—Fresh and Prime Now have not yet implemented those features. Amazon is also more protective of data from smaller programs and prefers to conceal data (like revenue) that would let observers estimate more sensitive data (like the size of the business or a category).
Therefore: different data sets available for different programs. Business users should be careful when averaging performance across programs, and only include programs where the data actually exists to avoid skewing averages.
Table 1. Sales data availability by program
| Amazon.com | Business | Fresh | Prime Now | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shipped units | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Shipped COGS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ordered units | ✓ | |||
| Ordered revenue (OPS) | ✓ | |||
| Customer returns | ✓ | |||
| Free replacements | ✓ | |||
| Sales rank | ✓ | |||
| Average sale price (ASP) | ✓ | |||
| Replenishable out-of-stock (Rep OOS) | ✓ | New | ||
| Lost buy box (LBB) | ✓ | New | ||
| Glance views | ✓ | |||
| Conversion rate | ✓ |
Table Here
Nuances for Reason Automation customers
When Amazon added glance views and conversion rates to Vendor Central in October 2020, they performed a backfill so brands could access older data from September, August, etc. This made it straightforward to add traffic and conversion to reports.
However, the new replenishable out-of-stock (Rep OOS) and lost buy box (LBB) data for Amazon Business was not backfilled. Most brands have had this data since November 2020, but earlier sales diagnostic reports will still be missing this data even if you had Amazon Business sales during that time period. If you aggregate Rep OOS and LBB across programs in your reporting, be thoughtful about comparing periods after Nov 2020 that contain Business data, against earlier periods that do not.