If you're an online seller of competitively priced products, you're probably well aware of the pricing policies of Amazon and Walmart for their respective marketplaces.
You may be wondering why some of your SKUs are "Unpublished" on Walmart or "Suppressed" on Amazon. This article will help you understand these listing statuses and how to optimize your pricing for selling on Walmart Marketplace and Amazon.
Unpublished on Walmart
Let's say the lowest price for product A is $20 on Amazon and the lowest price on Walmart is $22. Walmart may automatically Unpublish this listing from their website because they believe it's a bad consumer experience with the Walmart brand if it can be reinforced that Amazon has lower prices. For the listing to be Published, Sellers of product A on Walmart are now required to lower their price until it is at parity with Amazon.
According to Walmart's Knowledge Base, there are two pricing rules:
- Price Parity Rule: This rule will automatically unpublish items from Walmart Marketplace if a customer would save by purchasing the same item from the same Seller on a competing website, including the cost of shipping.
- Price Leadership Rule / Reasonable Price Not Satisfied: This rule will automatically unpublish items from Walmart Marketplace if a customer would save drastically by purchasing the item on a competing website, regardless of the Seller. This calculation also considers the cost of shipping.
To penalize uncompetitive pricing, Walmart currently unpublishes listings for 24-48 hours even when a price adjustment has been made by the seller. The lesson here, make sure your pricing is always competitive. Zentail's dynamic repricer for Walmart is designed to do just that.
Suppressed on Amazon
Let's say the lowest price for product B is $20 on Walmart and the lowest price on Amazon is $22. Amazon may automatically Suppress this ASIN (Amazon's acronym for unique product listing page) from their website because they believe it's a bad consumer experience with the Amazon brand. For the listing to be Un-suppressed, Sellers of product B will need to lower their price to match Walmart.
Price Parity
In an ideal world, to avoid being Unpublished on Walmart and Suppressed on Amazon, you would maintain the same price on each channel. For sellers that are not competing with other sellers, this is a feature offered by default by Zentail that has proven to be helpful for growing non-Amazon channels.
Dynamic Repricing on Walmart
Repricing on multiple channels is a delicate endeavor. If you're using software to dynamically adjust your price on Walmart to win the buy box, you need to be aware that this could cause Amazon to Suppress your listings.
Understanding and accepting these risks, many sellers have asked for the ability to dynamically reprice their Walmart listings. Zentail offers a dynamic repricer for Walmart that carefully considers the consequences of offering different prices across Amazon and Walmart Marketplace.
Pricing for success on Walmart Marketplace and Amazon
Here are some options to consider which will help you avoid Unpublished and Suppressed listings:
- Make sure your total price (item price + shipping price) matches across your channels. To address this concern, please make sure your shipping models for each channel are identical.
- Use the same item price on all channels.
- If you use a dynamic repricer, reprice on your most competitive channel and relay your pricing to your other channels. This is a best-practice and a feature offered by Zentail.
- If you dynamically reprice on Amazon and Walmart, make sure your repricer is smart enough to understand when your listings are Suppressed or Unpublished and can make the necessary adjustments to get you out of that dreaded status.
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