Buy Box basics every wholesale seller should know

Most Amazon sales go through the Buy Box. Understand how it works before you decide how many units to buy.

What the Buy Box is

The Buy Box is the Add to Cart button on a product page. When several sellers offer the same product, Amazon chooses one of them to feature, and most sales go through that offer.

What influences who wins

• Price, including shipping.
• Fulfilment method: FBA offers generally have an advantage.
• Seller performance, such as late shipments, cancellations and defects.
• Stock availability and delivery speed.

When you share the Buy Box

On listings with many sellers, the Buy Box rotates between them. If five sellers share it evenly, each one gets about a fifth of the sales, so you need to divide the product's monthly sales by the number of sellers to estimate what you will sell.

When Amazon is a seller

When Amazon sells a product itself, it often holds the Buy Box most of the time. Third-party sellers on those listings may sell very little. Check the history for periods when Amazon was out of stock, and do not count on those periods.

Plan for it in your numbers

Use a realistic share of sales when you decide how many units to order, and use the Buy Box price, not the highest price, to estimate profit. Wholesale Analyzer considers seller count and Amazon presence in its score for exactly this reason.