Amazon price trends

 

  • Amazon price trends

    Posted by Huw, 22 Sep 2011 17:40. Filed under Brickset.

    As you will have noticed over the last few weeks that we have been providing Amazon alerts, their prices go up and down like a yo-yo, and it can be difficult to know if the price has dropped to a new low, or whether it's just dropping to what it was before following a period of being out of stock by Amazon and thus fulfilled by 3rd party sellers.

    To help make this clearer, the Amazon bargain watch pages (UK | US) now provide links to graphs showing the price over time for each set. They make interesting viewing, particularly when there has been a lot of fluctuation. Take the UK price of the Toy Story train for example, its price seems to change every day, and is definitely heading down, but there are times when it goes back up for a few days.

    It's all very strange how Amazon prices things; we'll probably never know the hows and whys, but at least we have better visibility now and thus can make more informed buying decisions.


    20 comments, latest one posted 21 months ago. (Commenting has ended on this article)
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Comments

Posted by jonbuddy in United States, 22 Sep 2011 18:04

(Somewhat off-topic) I just started following the RSS feed, but every article shows the same title! Is there a way for it to title the article as the item(s) in short? It would be much easier than clicking on it constantly.

Posted by durik in United States, 22 Sep 2011 19:22

I love the graphs feature, very interesting...

Posted by Hello_World! in United States, 22 Sep 2011 19:43

Cool!! lots of strait lines in the US though. I like that there is a line for the RRP.

Posted by tiberium_blue in United Kingdom, 22 Sep 2011 19:47

From watching Amazon for a long time, the prices adjust to be slightly better than the lowest marketplace seller (even if it means going above RRP). They'll also price-match sales by other retailers if you send them a link which means you can sometimes take extra advantage of the free shipping.

Posted by legomatt in United Kingdom, 22 Sep 2011 20:37

I have a belief also - and it may be total nonsense - that amazon may have some sort of an automated price adjustment system that checks the number of hits an item receives, which is compared to a amazon-set purchase ratio - if the item is not purchased to a certain ratio of views, then the price automatically goes down by a percentage fraction. If the item makes the views to purchase ratio, then it goes back up. SO an item that is viewed a lot, and not purchased at all could see its price continue to fall until it starts being purchased again.

Posted by LukeSkywalker in Ireland, 22 Sep 2011 20:50

^@legomatt I think you're definitely on the right track there, I think airline companies do something similar with their fluctuation of plane ticket prices.

Posted by atkinsar in United Kingdom, 23 Sep 2011 02:41

^^ yep, I think that's about right too. So the funny thing is by telling more people about the offer (i.e.) sticking it on Brickset, the quicker the price is likely to go back up as it will get more views. Not that I'm complaining though, I love the feature, "you snooze you lose" as they say.

Oh, and nice addition with the graphs Huw.

Posted by BJMdotLEGO in Belgium, 23 Sep 2011 02:46

Did somebody say "graphs"? Excellent feature.

Posted by richselby in United Kingdom, 23 Sep 2011 03:28

Graphs. Excellent feature! Thanks, Huw.
For your next trick, how about predicted pricing as a dotted line after? :-)

Posted by flump in United Kingdom, 23 Sep 2011 03:37

"It's all very strange how Amazon prices things; we'll probably never know the hows and whys" - Huw

I did wonder last week whether demand required by Argos to run their promotion could have been partly responsible for Amazon's price hike a couple of weeks ago? Just a thought.

Posted by mkepcollection in United Kingdom, 23 Sep 2011 11:22

Love the graphs... might it be possible to add to the set information box box the lowest price Amazon have charged for a set (if its lower than the price shown...would give us an idea if it might be worth holding out before buying) and save opening up every graph....

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 23 Sep 2011 13:25

What's the light grey line in the graphs?

Posted by legomaniac in United States, 23 Sep 2011 13:52

Love the graphs!

Amazon does this price fluctuation with pretty much everything. Got some pretty good deals by checking every now and then, and sometimes wait too long :(

Posted by Matthew in United Kingdom, 23 Sep 2011 14:15

^^ It's the RRP

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 23 Sep 2011 14:27

@LegoCoastGuard: The DARK grey one is the RRP. There's another one, below it, but slightly lighter. What is that?

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 23 Sep 2011 14:39

Dark grey = RRP
Light grey = RRP-30% (UK) RRP-25% (US), in other words the price at which we alert.

@mkepcollection, great minds think alike, I plan to add that ASAP!

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 23 Sep 2011 14:44

@Huw: Good, thanks. :)

Posted by mkepcollection in United Kingdom, 23 Sep 2011 16:30

@Huw, adding the lowest price would be great , thank you!

Posted by tomchiverton in United Kingdom, 24 Sep 2011 16:29

It does seem that every other post on the RSS feed is just an advert for your Amazon deal, which is kinda distracting...

Posted by vwong19 in United States, 25 Sep 2011 10:49

Awesome features with Amazon. Any chance you could add Want and Have counts for each sale item to gauge how truly popular these items are with people. Review ratings might also be beneficial. Thanks!

Commenting has ended on this article.