Determining whether you are in a BuyBox or Select Merchant via API

Question

Is there a way to determine if we are (or) a “recognized trader" for a given product? Preferably using the MWS API Advertising API.

I know that this can be done using the product’s advertising API, but most of the products you can test in a given request are 10, and the throttling restrictions for this API seem somewhat strict (especially if you have 50,000 + ASIN).

We used the “re-pricing” service to handle this (but would like to add functionality to our application for managing our products), so I know that you can get data for large volumes of products in a timely manner, but I can’t understand how it to do.

To the side:

As I understand it, Amazon has tightened the advertising API due to the large number of abuses without real sales. I thought there might be a way to do this through MWS without the limitations given by MWS, actually making money from Amazon.

Answer 1

Sorry there is no way to get this information using the MWS API. The MWS API does not have any relative information, that is, it does not know anything about the goods of other sellers, so there is no way to see that your products are evaluated in comparison with others (this is the information that you need to determine if you own the sale) .

As you already know, you can get this information through the product’s advertising API, but with new restrictions in place it may not be practical for the size of your inventory (it will take three days two and half an hour at 20,000 units per <strike day). New restrictions have been affected by the "re-pricing" service that you used in the past. However, a grace period was provided for any existing accounts to modify their software. New restrictions will come into force for these accounts on February 12, 2012.

The only other opportunity open to you is to get information from the site (clear the screen). This is not a very attractive alternative due to latency problems, but if you have the infrastructure for a massive number of concurrent calls, then you need to go for this. In certain situations, I prefer to receive this type of information from the site, as this is what customers see (the latest information). I used to see the data coming from the product’s advertising API is outdated or just plain wrong.

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The limits are defined in the documentation for the hidden subheading of the Performance Guide and are located here (at the bottom of the page),

I must admit that some time has passed since I worked with the PA-API and forgot about boundaries. I thought it was something like 2000 per day, but it is actually 2000 per hour with one call per second. If you make calls too quickly, they will return the 503 answer, which is documented here .

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Update: Amazon has added a product API to the MWS API. GetCompetitivePricingForSKU gives you pricing information similar to the ItemLookup API Advertising feature. Using this information, you can determine the price of the owner of the Buy Box.