New pricing model enables Amazon customers to negotiate prices in select categories
SEATTLE - Amazon.com has added a new feature, called ‘Make an Offer,’ that allows customers to negotiate lower prices on thousands of items. The new pricing feature allows customers to offer to buy items at even lower prices. If agreed upon, customers can then purchase the items at a savings from the listed price.
To start, more than 150,000 items from sellers on Amazon are enabled with the ‘Make an Offer’ experience across sports and entertainment collectibles, collectible coins and fine art. The new feature will expand to hundreds of thousands of items from sellers in 2015.
Here’s how it works: Sellers enable the ‘Make an Offer’ feature for items to show customers they are willing to negotiate for a lower price than the price listed. When selecting ‘Make an Offer’ on an item’s product detail page, a customer can enter and submit a new price of their choosing.
The seller will receive the customer’s lower price offer through email, at which point the seller can accept, reject or counter the offer. The seller and customer can continue to negotiate through email until the negotiation is complete. When a seller accepts a customer’s offer, the customer is notified and can place the item into their shopping cart at the agreed upon new price for checkout and purchase.
“In a recent survey of our sellers, nearly half of the respondents told us that the ability to negotiate prices with customers would be important to drive more sales on Amazon. said Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace.” ‘Make an Offer’ delivers that functionality and makes customers feel confident they are getting an item they want at the lowest price possible.”
The ‘Make an Offer’ feature is not an auction format. All negotiations are 1:1 and private between individual customers and sellers. A seller is able to accept a customer’s offer at any time. The intention is to lower prices, and a customer negotiating with a seller will never pay more than the listed price.