What is an Amazon Piggyback Listing?

Amazon Piggybacking is becoming an ‘additional seller’ on the Amazon Marketplace. This happens when additional sellers try to capitalize on the original seller’s efforts and use their product listing to sell their own products. These additional sellers are listed under a different option from other sellers by Amazon.

Although piggybacking is not advisable, here’s a brief overview of how it helps sellers. For starters, it allows sellers to save a lot of time and money that would be involved in setting up a new listing from scratch. But on a strategic front, piggybacking also helps sellers understand the potential demand for their product before they can step into the real game. 

Sounds interesting, right? Basically, with piggybacking, you can easily try out a niche category without investing much and gain the advantage of understanding the consumer behaviors and their buying patterns much more closely with minimal efforts. 

However, there is a flip side to this as well. While piggybacking might seem like an excellent and smart move, it still has a lot of cons. It is not easy to get conversions initially when you piggyback. You’ll only get a chance at conversion if buyers look for the other seller’s page on the product page. This reduces the chances of getting sales to keep your business booming. When you piggyback, you have to cut down costs to attract customers, this can put a hole in your pocket. 

For when a seller piggybacks efficiently, the seller who is the actual owner of the product page feels threatened. The piggy backer can steal the buy box due to their lower prices; this is often referred to as hijacking. The piggy backer targets buyers who solely look for price benefits rather than seller credibility to steal the buy box. Being hijacked is not the only concern; piggy backers can also sell counterfeit products. Selling fake or copied products is illegal and can also damage your brand reputation in the long run. 

So, do you think piggybacking is ethical? Should you allow or engage in piggybacking to have an easy setup? Is the risk worth taking? Well, that’s a conundrum for you to settle. But here, we will help you decide better with our tips on piggybacking and how you can cope with it as a seller on both sides of the piggy. 

Being piggybacked upon can rarely be of advantage. It comes with many problems in the long run. You must keep a watchful eye on your listings and piggy backers. Here are some ways which can help you resolve your piggybacking issue. 

Constantly monitor your listings: Keep an eye out for other sellers trying to claim to be selling your brand. Always check your sales volume; if there is a sudden dip, ensure the possibility of piggybacking and take action. Lastly, regularly check if your brand has the buy box. 

Registering your brand with Amazon: Registered brands can raise concerns if resellers are selling the product at an unacceptably lower price or as cheap knockoffs. Such listings are quickly taken out of the equation by Amazon through their complaint handling mechanism that always favors the registered brands.

Display features of your brand clearly in the images: A clear display of the brand logo can help the customer distinguish the product clearly from counterfeit products. Also, watermarking the images used for display will help you keep fake and piggy backers away. 

Ensure references to warranty: Clearly state that warranty will only be valid for purchase from you as a seller for your branded product and will not be valid for other sellers or resellers.

Brand Gating: Amazon allows private labels to gate their brands to protect them from counterfeits and third-party sellers. However, several hurdles are to be passed for the same, such as registering your product, having a trademark, setting up a website, and other features that support you to become a legitimate brand on Amazon. But, once this is done, complaints can be filed with Amazon with third-party sellers and counterfeits, and strict actions will be taken against the same.

All these pointers will help you prevent your listing from being hijacked. Although, what if you have already lost your buy box to your piggy backer? Don’t lose hope; you can still repossess it. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you do exactly that.