Amazon said it would now display how many purchases a product has had in the past month, to the dismay of some sellers. In an announcement on Wednesday, Amazon explained:
“Product listings for certain categories including health and personal care, home, and sports, will display a “sales trend” that highlights how many customers recently purchased that product.
“”Sales trend” is a new listing feature that provides a broad estimate of the number of customers who recently bought a particular product. For example, the listing might show “10K+ bought in past month.” The feature is designed to help customers find your most recent popular products.
“Similar to customer reviews, badges, and sales rank, sales trend is automatically added to eligible listings.”
One seller said they thought the feature would harm smaller sellers, writing, “Like that you will just help big sellers become bigger and kill small sellers because clients will just follow the trend and buy from the big guy.”
Another seller pointed out it would help competitors: “The feature is designed to help competitors find your unit count of highest volume popular products sold.”
Amazon pointed sellers to more information on Seller Central.
