The 2nd Buy Box: What Amazon’s new feature means for brands

- Written by Jérôme de Guigné

Have you benefited from the 2nd Buy Box yet?

This new feature from Amazon finally allows more than one seller to dominate when consumers are shopping on Amazon. It gives more sellers a chance of being chosen, even with higher prices or slower delivery.

What’s it all about?

The EU has strict competition rules. In 2019 the European Commission opened investigations into whether Amazon breaches those rules, as Amazon is both a marketplace for sellers, and a competing seller on that same marketplace. Its investigations focused on non-public seller data, the Buy Box and Prime.

It found the Buy Box unduly favours Amazon’s own retail business, as well as marketplace sellers that use Amazon’s logistics and delivery services.

Amazon has therefore made commitments to:

• Apply equal treatment to all sellers when ranking their offers to choose the Buy Box winner
• Display a second competing offer to the Buy Box winner if there is a second offer that is sufficiently differentiated from the first one on price and/or delivery.

Amazon promised that both offers will show the same descriptive information and give the same purchasing experience, enhancing consumer choice.

So what does that look like in practice?

The 2nd Buy Box appears in grey below the main buy box. Clicking on it brings it up to the top, with the ‘Add to Basket’ button.

Amazon uses nice wording to promote the alternative offer: “Get it faster”, “Another way to buy”, “Save with used — like new”, “Willing to wait?”.