Amazon Vendor vs. Amazon Seller

By deciding to sell your products through a first-party seller like Vendor Central, your customers will have a higher level of confidence since customers are aware that your product is being sold by Amazon. The Amazon seal of approval will give customers the assurance and confidence of placing an order through Amazon, something that isn’t really felt with third-party merchants with barely any recognition.

Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) provides brands with powerful tools with all sorts of features for getting their products in front of customers. Amazon Marketing Services will allow vendors to increase demand with keyword-targeted advertising campaigns made to boost traffic to Amazon product pages. While both vendor and sellers do have access to professional Amazon Marketing Services, Vendor Central users will have a superior platform to run AMS advert campaigns.

Managing your campaign and layering your keywords into your product is important for success. 

Working through Amazon is considered a much simpler process with Vendor Central compared to Seller Central. For vendors, the main objective is to fill out orders on Amazon, billing, and circumventing chargebacks.

In the case of a seller, especially those who use FBA, they are responsible for things such as sales reconciliation, tax liabilities, lost inventories, and other such costs. Having a primary purchaser on Amazon is far simpler than servicing hundreds or even thousands of individual purchasers an Amazon seller can potentially run into with Seller Central. 

If you are planning to sell through Vendor Central, Amazon will give you the option to participate in promotion programs such as Amazon Vine, which sends your products to the best reviewers around before they appear on the storefront, and Subscribe & Save. 

With a growing emphasis on the value of customer feedback as it connects to the quality of a product, user-generated content can also play a huge role in increasing brand trust and boosting sales.

Amazon doesn’t follow the Minimum Advertised Pricing (MAP) guidelines from manufacturers as strictly as they should. Meaning that Amazon has and will adjust their retail prices whenever they want to based on their own personal algorithms. Something like this could lead to a seller losing out on additional revenue if it decreases their margins. 

Amazon comes with specific and inflexible guidelines to fill out purchase orders. Vendors that are experiencing issues maintaining their stock or quickly fulfilling orders will be hit with a significant amount of chargebacks which can consume a good chunk of Amazon sellers profits. 

The company branding or even their product can be a large advantage and contrast for sellers if they properly manage and leverage it. Although, Amazon sellers have a huge chance of losing control over their brand messaging once they start selling their products through the Vendor Central program. 

By losing control over your brand you won’t be able to control how your product is represented on the Amazon Marketplace, products will be shipped through a brown Amazon box, and the seller’s capability to customize the consumer’s experience will be limited.

Seller central shall provide a notable amount of customer data for free to the seller. You will be allowed to have access to Amazon consumer data that can help you be aware of informed consumers and product trends, such as who is purchasing products and the location they are based on.

This can be indispensable when choosing a third-party logistics provider. Deciding where it’s best to ship from, and splitting inventory through various fulfillment centers can help save money and reduce the time of transit.

When you’re the seller, you’ll have complete control over the prices you set, so if you are using any other retail channels besides Amazon you’ll be allowed uniformity. Furthermore, if you require a change to your price in order to match a competitor, the options to enable that are available.

There will be times when a seller finds out that their retail partners or an unauthorized third party seller list older versions of their products with getting in contact with them. The listings will typically contain a limited amount of content and images. The only way you can gain control and prevent these unauthorized listings is by using a Seller Central account that is enrolled with Amazon’s brand registry.

At certain times the fulfillment or shipping cost can limit the chance to sell lower-priced products through amazon. The minimum charge for non-media FBA products that are less than a pound currently costs around $2.41, which doesn’t include the additional commission that Amazon charges.

This will rapidly stack up depending on the size and weight of the products that a person is selling. This means that you’ll need to have a very good grasp over the Amazon FBA costs and account for those costs into your decision-making process. 

Being able to have control over your Amazon marketing and sales is important for any Amazon seller out there, but most sellers are incapable of grasping the required knowledge to maintain control. Similar to any other storefront in the Amazon marketplace, the seller will need to continuously manage their store by updating their product description, marketing their products through various places, and monitoring consumer behavior.