Amazon Marketplace

Amazon Marketplace ( i.e:Third-party Marketplace ) is Amazon.com's fixed-price online marketplace that allows sellers to survey their goods alongside Amazon's offerings. Buyers can buy new and used items sold directly by a third party through Amazon.com using Amazon Marketplace. This concept is similar to eBay's successful half.com.

This sales strategy and program has been very profitable for Amazon.com: Amazon charges a commission rate of 6 to 15 percent (for books it is 15 %) of the sale price, a $0.99 per-transaction fee, as well as a variable closing fee (for books $1.35).

For example, if a book is sold for $6.01, minimum shipping costs are $3.00 plus $0.99 per book. So the buyer pays $10.00, the seller receives $6.76, Amazon receives $3.24, which is 32 %.

If a book is sold for $16.01, minimum shipping costs are $3.00 plus $0.99 per book. So the buyer pays $20.00, the seller receives $15.26, Amazon receives $4.74, which is 24 %.

Users can leave feedback on transactions, similar to eBay's feedback system, except that Amazon uses a five star rating system instead of just positive, neutral, or negative. Any feedback less than four stars will negatively affect the seller's rating. It is important to note that this rating system is different from Amazon's regular book rating system - while their book rating system should be used to vote on the content of the book, the quality of the publication, the individual's opinion of the book, or any number of other factors, the Amazon Marketplace rating system should only be used to describe the quality of the transaction and whether the product meets the criteria in the seller's listing. Negative feedback, for instance, because a book is old and expensive, affects the seller's feedback rating negatively, and causes other buyers to be less likely to purchase from that seller.

Another big difference between the Amazon and eBay feedback models is reciprocity. Amazon's is a one way street. The seller is always judged for the feedback left; but whilst the seller can affect the feedback of a buyer, this is of much less significance because the buyer's feedback is not included in any metric Amazon uses. (Though it is discoverable, and thus may influence how subsequent sellers approach resolving a dispute with the same buyer.) If a buyer on eBay has bad feedback a seller can block them; but on Amazon sellers have to accept sales from all customers regardless of feedback. Thus, customers can leave poor feedback with no consequence to themselves, however unreasonable. Powersellers on eBay who are also selling on Amazon will commonly have feedback ratings 5% lower on Amazon than on eBay.