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Most Amazon purchases start with a search, pass through a results page and a product page, and end with a click on the offer Amazon features there.

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The path to a purchase

  1. Search. The shopper types a search, such as “gps dog collar”. We call each distinct search text a search (or search term).
  2. Results page. Amazon shows a grid of products ranked by its own organic ranking, with sponsored (paid) tiles mixed in and above it. See The Search Results Page.
  3. Click. The shopper clicks a product, organic or sponsored. A click on a sponsored tile is what an advertiser pays for. See The Auction.
  4. Product page. Also called the detail page. It shows the product, its variations (colours, sizes), its reviews, and more ads for other products.
  5. Buy Box and order. The shopper adds the featured offer to the cart and buys. Amazon may show the order as a result of the ad for days afterwards. See Measuring Results.
A shopper can also arrive on a product page without a search, from another product’s page, a recommendation, or an ad elsewhere. Search is the path that matters most for advertising, because it is where Amazon tells us what the shopper wanted.

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Products, listings and product lines

  • ASIN. Amazon’s id for one product (Amazon Standard Identification Number). Every size, colour or scent of a product has its own child ASIN.
  • Parent ASIN. Groups the child ASINs of one product into a variation family, shown as one product page with a picker.
  • Listing. A product page and what it sells. We use listing and ASIN loosely as the same thing.
  • Product line. Our term: the listings a shopper chooses between by form, so they differ only by colour, scent or size. A product line is what we report revenue for and plan advertising around; a colour is a variant inside it, never its own line.

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Who sells

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The Buy Box

Several sellers can offer the same listing. Amazon features one offer on the product page, the Buy Box; most shoppers buy from it without looking at the others. A Sponsored Products ad only serves while the advertiser’s own offer holds the Buy Box, so a seller who shares a listing with others advertises only as often as it wins the Buy Box.

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Markets and niches

Amazon files every listing into its category tree. We assign each listing to one subcategory of that tree (a browse node) and call that subcategory the listing’s market. Separately, we group searches by what the shopper wants: a cluster of searches with one shopper intent is a niche. A market is about products; a niche is about searches. See Demand and Markets.

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What we have measured