Every second of every day the competitive landscape of the Walmart Marketplace changes.
To the consumer, things might appear static and unmoving, but in reality, listings and prices are in a constant state of flux.
For sellers with Buy Box competition, it's imperative to monitor price changes of competing offers, and without automation, this can be an impossible task.
Walmart Marketplaces's recently released Buy Box notification API makes managing this process easier. Through instant Buy Box notifications, sellers and developers can leverage automation to not only keep up with their competition, but also rise above it.
Sellers using SellerActive's repricing software are now leveraging this feature to get more Buy Box visibility, and more orders.
Simply put, Walmart’s API automatically updates prices on marketplace listings so sellers can keep their prices competitive, increase their chances of winning the Buy Box, and increase profits.
Everything for sale on Walmart has its own listing page. If more than one retailer is selling the same item, a listing will include multiple offers. One winning offer will occupy the eye-catching Buy Box.
Any automated pricing solution for Walmart should look at the competitive data for a product before making a pricing decision on behalf of a seller.
That's why the Walmart Marketplace team is currently testing their latest API with a few of the top automated pricing platforms out there, and SellerActive was fortunate to be one of them.
Historically, we at SellerActive could request a Buy Box data report every two hours, which outlined the chosen Buy Box price, our sellers’ price, and up to two other offers competing for that particular product.
Often the file itself wouldn’t be updated for a full day, however, which resulted in data that was 24 hours old.
To make a pricing decision in the best interest of our sellers, this data limitation left us looking at the Buy Box price each day, pricing slightly below it, and hoping no one else had changed their prices before them. Then we'd wait 24 hours to learn if the seller had captured the Buy Box or not, and repeat the process.
Thanks to the recently released Buy Box notifications, this waiting game goes away. Walmart now instantly alerts SellerActive whenever the Buy Box owner changes. So when a price change is made by our repricer to capture the Buy Box, a notification will let us know immediately if we've captured it.
On the flip side, if a notification isn’t received, we can infer the item hasn’t been priced low enough to capture the Buy Box, and pricing will resume until it does.
The repricing release has seen massive success so far.
For items not at their minimum prices, our software captures the Buy Box for sellers 93% of the time. The remaining 7% of the time, sellers are competing with either Walmart, or someone who has a much faster shipping option than their own.
Learn more by visiting our website to schedule a free demo and see the API in action.