How to find out if Amazon itself is selling an item through API?

Question

I am using "GetLowestOfferListingsForASIN" MWS API to get the lowest prices sold in Amazon for an ASIN. My requirement is to find out if the lowest price is being sold by Amazon itself. Since the API is not returning any seller ID so I am unable to determine who the seller is.

I know that "AnyOfferChanged" subscription does return seller IDs however it notifies only for items that I sell. But I have lots of ASINs that I do not sell and I still need there price at which Amazon is selling.

Could any one please tell me if this is possible through the API or if there is any other method.

Thanking you all in advance.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 07 '15 at 15:28

As far as I can tell, this is not possible and they purposely don't give seller info with the prices through the MWS API. I wanted the same information and wasn't able to gather anything better than whether it's FBA or not. If you found another way, I'm interested in knowing.

Daniel Walter · Answer 2 · 2015-11-03T16:38:12.190

This is possible, but a bit indirect. You have to subscribe to AnyOfferChangedNotification through the Subscription API. Then you can process messages in your Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) queue. This messages will contain SellerID´s and you can identify amazon.

Notifications will look like:

<Notification>
<NotificationMetaData>
    <NotificationType>AnyOfferChanged</NotificationType>
    <PayloadVersion>1.0</PayloadVersion>
    <UniqueId>c027f13372c522</UniqueId>
    <PublishTime>2015-11-03T16:24:13.907Z</PublishTime>
    <SellerId>1337</SellerId>
    <MarketplaceId>A1PA6795UKMFR9</MarketplaceId>
</NotificationMetaData>

<NotificationPayload>
    <AnyOfferChangedNotification>

        <OfferChangeTrigger>
            <MarketplaceId>A1PA6795UKMFR9</MarketplaceId>
            <ASIN>B00FQ8AVHS</ASIN>
            <ItemCondition>new</ItemCondition>
            <TimeOfOfferChange>2015-11-03T16:24:13.664Z</TimeOfOfferChange>
        </OfferChangeTrigger>

        <Summary>
            <NumberOfOffers>
                <OfferCount condition="new" fulfillmentChannel="Amazon">2</OfferCount>
                <OfferCount condition="new" fulfillmentChannel="Merchant">14</OfferCount>
                <OfferCount condition="used" fulfillmentChannel="Amazon">2</OfferCount>
            </NumberOfOffers>

            <LowestPrices>
                <LowestPrice condition="new" fulfillmentChannel="Amazon">
                    <LandedPrice>
                        <Amount>88.02</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </LandedPrice>
                    <ListingPrice>
                        <Amount>88.02</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </ListingPrice>
                    <Shipping>
                        <Amount>0.00</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </Shipping>
                </LowestPrice>

                <LowestPrice condition="new" fulfillmentChannel="Merchant">
                    <LandedPrice>
                        <Amount>92.50</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </LandedPrice>
                    <ListingPrice>
                        <Amount>88.00</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </ListingPrice>
                    <Shipping>
                        <Amount>4.50</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </Shipping>
                </LowestPrice>

                <LowestPrice condition="used" fulfillmentChannel="Amazon">
                    <LandedPrice>
                        <Amount>79.26</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </LandedPrice>
                    <ListingPrice>
                        <Amount>79.26</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </ListingPrice>
                    <Shipping>
                        <Amount>0.00</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </Shipping>
                </LowestPrice>
            </LowestPrices>

            <BuyBoxPrices>
                <BuyBoxPrice condition="new">
                    <LandedPrice>
                        <Amount>88.08</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </LandedPrice>
                    <ListingPrice>
                        <Amount>88.08</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </ListingPrice>
                    <Shipping>
                        <Amount>0.00</Amount>
                        <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                    </Shipping>
                </BuyBoxPrice>
            </BuyBoxPrices>

            <ListPrice>
                <Amount>197.47</Amount>
                <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
            </ListPrice>
            <SuggestedLowerPricePlusShipping>
                <Amount>88.00</Amount>
                <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
            </SuggestedLowerPricePlusShipping>

            <SalesRankings>
                <SalesRank>
                    <ProductCategoryId>automotive_display_on_website</ProductCategoryId>
                    <Rank>122</Rank>
                </SalesRank>
                <SalesRank>
                    <ProductCategoryId>4958715031</ProductCategoryId>
                    <Rank>11</Rank>
                </SalesRank>
            </SalesRankings>

            <BuyBoxEligibleOffers>
                <OfferCount condition="new" fulfillmentChannel="Amazon">2</OfferCount>
                <OfferCount condition="new" fulfillmentChannel="Merchant">13</OfferCount>
                <OfferCount condition="used" fulfillmentChannel="Amazon">2</OfferCount>
            </BuyBoxEligibleOffers>
        </Summary>

        <Offers>
            <Offer>

                <SellerId>A3TZZ7DOC6G9UH</SellerId>
                <SubCondition>new</SubCondition>
                <SellerFeedbackRating>
                    <SellerPositiveFeedbackRating>99</SellerPositiveFeedbackRating>
                    <FeedbackCount>18539</FeedbackCount>
                </SellerFeedbackRating>

                <ShippingTime minimumHours="0" maximumHours="0" availabilityType="NOW"/>

                <ListingPrice>
                    <Amount>88.02</Amount>
                    <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                </ListingPrice>

                <Shipping>
                    <Amount>0.00</Amount>
                    <CurrencyCode>EUR</CurrencyCode>
                </Shipping>

                <IsFulfilledByAmazon>true</IsFulfilledByAmazon>
                <IsBuyBoxWinner>false</IsBuyBoxWinner>

                <IsFeaturedMerchant>true</IsFeaturedMerchant>
                <ShipsDomestically>true</ShipsDomestically>

            </Offer>

            <!-- more offers here -->

        </Offers>

    </AnyOfferChangedNotification>
</NotificationPayload>
</Notification>

In this example I cutted off other Offers to make it a bit shorter. As you can see the value of Notification.NotificationPayload.AnyOfferChangedNotification.Offers.Offer.SellerId is A3TZZ7DOC6G9UH. Amazon has its own unique SellerId for their seller accounts.

If you has set up such a system and keep track of this information for all your products you will know wich one is sold by amazon. I am doing this for a big amount of products and it works fine.

but we can receive notifications for the items that we sell only. — Suraj, Nov 04 '15 at 10:18
of course. if you really whant you can list products you are not really selling and use high prices, low quantities and very high fulfillment latency. this way you "could" list "all" products. if such an product is sold, you can just buy it by amazon on your own and send it to the customer. — Daniel Walter, Nov 04 '15 at 10:27

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 02 '16 at 11:40

You would need to use the Product Advertising API.

The operations ItemSearch and ItemLookup support an optional paramter MerchantId that can be used to filter the results by MerchantId.

To find if Amazon itself is the seller, set MerchantId = Amazon

Read the API doc here http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/ItemSearch.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/ItemLookup.html

How to find out if Amazon itself is selling an item through API?

3 Answers3