BBC Radio 4 You & Yours: Amazon price parity

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You & YoursI’m just back from the Radio 4 Studios where one of the topics for today’s program was the effect of Amazon ending their Price Parity policy.

Hosted today by Louise Minchin (better known as a BBC 1 Breakfast presenter), the program looked at whether price parity means you should shop around for the best deal or if you can still get a great price on Amazon. One retailer, Sam Hamilton who runs Zooron and MadJungle said yes you can buy cheaper from his website than on Amazon.

I’m not so sure that’s always the case but I gave the example of the Leith Tea Company who have a discount if you buy direct (as well as a loyalty scheme which you just can’t set up on Amazon). I also discussed how a retailer can set up bundled discounts on their website which you also can’t do on Amazon as consumers may be buying products from multiple retailers, plus of course if you have a specialist website you can tailor it to your market vertical.

BBC iPlayerYou can listen to the entire You & Yours program on the BBC website. If you want to jump straight to the Amazon Price Parity segment it starts 12 minutes and 30 seconds into the program.

7 Responses

  1. Nice one Chris.
    For Sam it was 15 % for us it’s 25% comission in Jewellery.
    I’m sure there was another country that was investigating Amazon over the “Price Parity”. Would be interesting to know if they have dropped it in ALL countries.

  2. Hi Chris, I listened to the programme live & was hoping that you would post something on the site about it….Can you give a bit more info about the prep work that ths BBC does with interviewees in this situation.. ie. are your comments/ soundbites rehearsed with them – and to what extent are you thrown in at the deep-end ?

    In terms of the whole price parity issue- the reality is that Amazon have spent the last 5 years pushing prime (next day delivery) and Lockers to buyers; and pushing sellers into using FBA…. Essentialy, Amazon no longer have to worry about items being potentially cheaper on other websites – as they have effectively locked buyers into Amazon via the lockers & Prime… As well as locking sellers into Amazon with FBA…. (I have seen so many dvd sellers who have succumbed to FBA in the last few years- and I can’t see them going back to running their own websites as they did before)

  3. Good to hear Tamebay getting some exposure.
    And yes Chris I suspect the BBC did want you to give Amazon a bit of going over but you were quite balanced and measured as ever.
    If memory serves you also made the key point that so many forget in that your Amazon fees include serious marketing/transaction costs that still have to be paid for when running your own website (e.g. PPC etc) so it is not automatically that much cheaper (certain categories excepted like Jewellery etc) off Amazon.
    No mention of Flubit and their supposed business model which was a pity when looking at ‘price parity’ and ‘price discount’ issues.

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