Data Automation: Seller Central and Vendor Central APIs

Secret To Unlocking Amazon Vendor Central Reports

What Does The Best Amazon Vendor Central Analytics Opportunities Look Like? 3 Critical Examples

Closing the gap in official API support for Amazon Vendor Central vs Seller Central has been a long-standing area of improvement requested by both Amazon Vendors and developers. Unlike Amazon Marketing Services, which offered consistent support for Vendors and Sellers, the same was not true for the retail side of the Amazon house.

Until recently, there was no modern Amazon Vendor Central API. This made reporting manual and messy for Vendors looking to optimize their Amazon business model. Also, the logistical requirements of using the legacy Amazon Vendor Central EDI were one of the common reasons Vendors required significant technology investments due to the complexity of that platform.

Update: As of June 21, 2023, Amazon has released a new, near real-time API for Vendor retail analytics. This is a real game-changer for Vendors!

Amazon Rapid Retail Analytics: New API for Real-time Metrics

New Selling Partner API for Vendors

Amazon Vendor Central (Vendor Central) now offers merchants access to 3 core categories of detailed reporting about their products and sales performance across multiple channels. This is mainly made possible due to the release of a new, modern Amazon SP-API for Vendors.

The new API has opened new opportunities to harness data with code-free Amazon Vendor Central Software. Compared to the legacy Vendor EDI system, which was a complex platform to work with, the new API brings Vendors to the same playing field as sellers. Like Vendors, a similar migration Amazon MWS: Transition to SP-API occurred for Sellers.

As a result of the new API, Amazon Vendor Central data is more accessible, allowing you to use this information to make better decisions about how to run your business.

However, understanding the types of metrics and reports offered by Vendor Central can be challenging. We’ve been working hard to simplify the process of analyzing Vendor Central reports and making sense of the data.

3 Types Of Amazon Vendor Central Reports

Amazon provides a comprehensive collection of data points that help you to make better decisions about the performance of your e-commerce business.

Vendors can use Vendor Central reports to track demand levels and external traffic to your Brand or generate insights into customer experiences that allow your team to make informed product and media investment decisions.

There are three principal groups of Vendor Reports;

1. Amazon Advertising
2. Brand Analytics Reports
3. Vendor Retail Analytics Reports
4. Vendor Near Real-Time Retail Analytics (New)

Even though Amazon Vendor Central data may not cover the same collection reports available to Sellers, it is more extensive than ever. Unlike Amazon Seller Central Reports, Vendor Central does not offer detailed reports on listings, fulfillment, Inventory Health, Settlement reports, or which fulfillment centers a product is shipped from.

Much of what is found in the (2) (3) analytics reports was part of Amazon Vendor Central’s Amazon Retail Analytics Premium. While the new API opens new pathways to efficient data access, some reports require registration and approval by Amazon. Specifically, all Amazon Brand Analytics reports require that your brand is registered in the Amazon Brand Registry. To enroll in the Brand Registry, go to the eligibility page.

1. Amazon Ads

Amazon offers a full-featured advertising solution for sellers and vendors to connect with potential customers to stimulate demand, build product awareness, and undertake a deep dive into a target audience for your Brand.

While the Amazon Advertising Console and Amazon Seller Central Dashboard provide insight into products, keywords, and creative performance, the true power of your Amazon vendor central analytics efforts comes to life when you tap into the data behind the advertising reports. Specifically, their data from the Amazon Advertising API.

1. Amazon Sponsored Brands
2. Amazon Sponsored Products
3. Amazon Sponsored Display
4. Amazon Attribution
5. Amazon DSP
6. Amazon Marketing Stream

Reports operate on a daily time frame, except for streams which are hourly. The data from the API offers a detailed picture of your media investments, with a maximum reporting period of 60 to 90 days for lookback windows.

Here is what Amazon says on the topic;

Conversion data is refreshed and validated at daily, weekly, and monthly intervals, and is subject to change for up to 60 days back from the current date. We recommend re-retrieving reports monthly to ensure your conversion metrics are up to date.

Automated data access to Amazon Advertising tools provides performance insights for advertising costs, conversion costs, ASINs with strong demand, and Amazon SEO.

2. Vendor Brand Analytics

What was once known as “ARA Premium” is now called “Brand Analytics.” Per Amazon;

Brand Analytics reports cover in-depth sales, marketing, operations, customer behavior, and enhanced trends to enable you to make more informed business decisions, assess your market share, identify new opportunities, and monitor factors that affect sales.

The change to the new API created more consistency with Amazon Seller Central, which ensures the programs offered on the two platforms are more consistent.

There are five core report types, two of which have been removed as of June 30, 2022.

1. Amazon Search Term Report helps you determine what keywords people use to look up your product and product category. This report gives insights into how often people search for your product and what words they type into the search bar. You can even see if specific terms increase or decrease over time. This can also provide insights into a competitive product listing and market share.
2. Repeat Purchase Report helps you identify repeat purchases. If someone buys something weekly, it could mean she likes your product. Or perhaps she purchased the same thing because her friends recommended it. Either way, knowing this detail can help you market to her better.
3. Market Basket Analysis lets you see if there are any trends in your customer base. For example, if everyone is buying one particular product, you may want to add another similar one. Alternatively, you might consider dropping prices if no one is buying anything.
4. Item Comparison reports let you compare your product to others. Are customers buying yours more frequently than competitors? Do they purchase different sizes or colors? Knowing this data can help you improve your marketing strategy. This report was deprecated (removed) on June 30, 2022.
5. Alternate Purchases reports show you what products consumers are buying instead of yours. If someone isn’t buying your product, he’s looking for something else. By seeing his alternatives, you can ensure you’re offering the best value. This report was deprecated (removed) on June 30, 2022.

We go into each report in more detail below.

Amazon Search Terms Report

Here is Amazon’s description;

“Discover which products win the most clicks and conversions on strategic search terms. Assess the impact of your marketing campaigns by monitoring trends.”

The Amazon Search Terms Report provides data about how people search for products on Amazon. You can use it to identify popular terms, discover trends over time, and learn what works best for your Brand.

Manual or automated, learn how to download the Amazon Search Terms report.

Repeat Purchase Behavior

Here is Amazon’s description;

“Better strategize and assess your marketing campaigns to drive repeat purchases and acquire new customers.”

The report includes information on how often people make repeat purchases, whether they repurchase the same item, and even what day of the week they typically make repeat purchases. You can use this data to improve your marketing strategy and increase sales.

Market Basket Analysis

Here is Amazon’s description;

“Identify cross-selling and bundling opportunities by gaining insight into products that are being purchased together by your customers.”

Marketing experts recommend market basket analysis to understand what products consumers buy together. A market basket analysis helps you determine how often certain items are purchased together and whether there are opportunities to sell related products. You can use this information to build better marketing campaigns and offer cross-selling opportunities.

3. Vendor Retail Analytics Reports

As of March 23, 2022, new Vendor retail analytics report types are available through the Selling Partner Application Programming Interface (SP-API). Amazon is replacing the existing EDI Sales and Inventory and Forecast reports with new API Sales, Inventory, and Forecasting reports.

Per Amazon;

Vendor Retail Analytics report types are replacing the existing EDI Sales (X12 852, EDIFACT SLSRPT) and Forecast (X12 830, EDIFACT DELFOR) reports.

Amazon Retail Analytics, or ARA, provides you with the data you need to manage and grow your business with Amazon Retail. The data allows you to create custom performance dashboards to monitor your Amazon retail KPIs, evaluate your performance, identify operational improvement opportunities, and glean valuable insights to shape your business strategy.

For reference, here is a sample mapping of the legacy Amazon Retail Analytics EDI transactions to API report types:

• Sales diagnostic: Sales (X12 852, EDIFACT SLSRPT) To GET_VENDOR_SALES_REPORT
• Inventory health & planning: Sales (X12 852, EDIFACT SLSRPT) ->GET_VENDOR_INVENTORY_REPORT
• Forecasting: Forecasting (X12 830, EDIFACT DELFOR)->GET_VENDOR_FORECASTING_REPORT

The new Vendor Retail Analytics Reports offer a collection of reports that share time series data for a vendor’s business, including the historical sales, traffic, inventory, and forecast metrics.

• Vendor Sales Report
• Net Pure Product Margin Report
• Vendor Traffic Report
• Vendor Forecasting Report
• Vendor Inventory Report

Like Brand Analytics Reports, Vendor Retail Analytics reports are only available to vendors with the Brand Analytics Selling Partner role.

Vendor Inventory Report: Inventory Health

Monitor the health of the inventory levels of your products through weekly updates; quickly identify and respond to unfavorable trends.

Vendor Forecasting Report: Forecast and Inventory Planning

Prevent replenishable out-of-stock revenue losses with data-driven inventory planning.

Vendor Traffic Report: Traffic Diagnostic

The Traffic Diagnostic Report gives insight into your web presence and helps you understand your online performance.

Here is how Amazon describes this;

Quickly identify changes in a) glance views and b) conversion by viewing prior period, previous year, and industry benchmark.

You’ll learn whether your products are selling well or not. You’ll find out if you’re losing customers because your prices are too high or too low. And you’ll discover whether you’re getting enough exposure or not.

Vendor Sales Report: Sales Diagnostic

Quickly identify opportunities by determining what is contributing to sales performance. This also offers insights into sales history, including periods and SKUs that may have had sales increase (or decrease).

Net Pure Product Margin Report or Net PPM

You can quickly identify which products contribute to profitability by looking at a) Net PPM, b) a percentage of total revenue, and c) the prior period.

For more information on Vendor Retail Analytics reports, see Amazon Selling Partner Report Type docs or the Amazon Vendor Central FAQ for information about their program.

4. Vendor Near Real-time Retail Analytics

The following is an overview of the metrics and their definitions for Sales, Inventory, and Traffic data feeds:

Sales

• Ordered Units: It represents the number of units Amazon customers order for a specific ASIN within a given time frame. This number can be negative if there are more cancellations than orders.
• Ordered Revenue refers to the total revenue generated from the aggregated ordered product sales for the specified ASIN within a given time frame. Adjustments are made to account for cancellations.

Inventory:

• Highly Available Inventory Units: This metric represents the number of units available for sale on the Amazon website across different regions and apps. It is based on the units in Amazon fulfillment centers that are in a sellable condition, excluding units in customer shopping carts or allocated for other orders.

Traffic:

• Glance Views: It indicates the number of times customers have viewed the product detail page for a specific ASIN. The views are counted when a particular merchant is the featured offer for the product. For vendors, this metric is applicable when retail is the featured offer. Glance views are reported based on the Amazon Retail Analytics manufacturing view.

See these posts for more details on this API:

Amazon Rapid Retail Analytics: New API for Real-time Metrics

Unleashing Business Insights With Amazon Rapid Retail Analytics

Summary

Amazon Vendor Central’s move to the Amazon Platform for SP-API opened new opportunities for merchants to use data for insight-driven business decisions. Creating a complete, trusted picture of your Amazon business is easier than ever.

Amazon Vendors also have direct access to a collection of data feeds;

• Vendor Sales Report
• Net Pure Product Margin Report
• Vendor Traffic Report
• Vendor Forecasting Report
• Vendor Inventory Manufacturing Report
• Vendor Inventory Sourcing Report
• Vendor Brand Analytics
• Vendor Real-time Traffic
• Vendor Real-time Inventory
• Vendor Real-time Sales

You can use Amazon data to forecast demand, understand goods sold, determine where to allocate resources, or how best to maximize profit. You can also identify trends in buying patterns and analyze customer preferences.

Unlocking data allows you to create a tailored, private Amazon Vendor Central dashboard, visualization, or report specific to your needs;

1. Unify your Vendor Reports into a leading data lake or cloud warehouses like Amazon Redshift, Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Data Lake, Ahana, and Amazon Athena for a unified, analytics-ready single source of truth to fuel informed decisions on product, media, and customer demand.
2. Use an industry-leading analytics tool like Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker, Amazon QuickSight, SAP, Alteryx, dbt, Azure Data Factory, Qlik Sense, and many others to turn manual monthly reports into automated, rapid business reports that ensure your team has immediate access to actionable insights. Create customized traffic dashboards, track spending on advertising campaigns, or additional reports that allow you to build competitive intelligence.
3. With data unified and accessible, quickly optimize for poor conversion rates, ordered product sales, identify gaps in operational performance, uncover the percentage of customers converting, refine advertising efforts on and off Amazon, or discover key customer metrics that impact purchase decisions.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How do I become a Vendor?

• See the Amazon Vendor Central FAQ for information about their program

How do I qualify for Brand Analytics?

• You must be a Brand Owner enrolled in Brand Registry, be internal to the Brand, and be responsible for selling the Brand on Amazon.
• Any specific Brand business report requires being enrolled (Brand enrollment is also required for Amazon Seller reports access as well)
• Enrollment in Brand Registry will become a prerequisite for Vendors to qualify for Brand Analytics on April 1, 2020; vendors who had access to ARA Premium as of January 31, 2020, will have access to Brand Analytics until April 1, regardless of their enrollment status.
• Access to Brand Analytics is subject to all applicable Terms and Conditions.

What is Brand Registry, and how do I enroll?

• Brand Registry helps you protect your intellectual property and create a real and trusted experience for customers on Amazon.
• To learn more about Brand Registry, its benefits, and eligibility requirements, visit the Brand Registry website: www.brandregistry.com

What information is provided in Brand Analytics?

• Access to years’ worth of data within custom date ranges for various Amazon business reports.
• Sales data by a particular state, province, or postal code.
• Top search terms across Amazon.
• Products customers purchased after viewing your products.
• Products customers purchased at the same time as purchasing your products.
• Unique and repeat purchase data.

What if I’m not a Brand Owner?

Vendors who are not Brand Owners or are Brand Owners not enrolled in Brand Registry will retain access to Amazon Retail Analytics Basic (ARA Basic) for their data and reporting needs.

How do I access sales information for my products?

Sales information can be accessed through the “Sales Diagnostic” report accessible in the reports pane on the left-hand side of the page. You can also use the metric locator to locate all available metrics.

How do I find the metrics that I’m looking for?

Here’s a map of the metrics currently available on the site. You can use the report data to create custom reports, and unified advertising reports with sale overlays.

Can I access historical Amazon data?

Yes. Historical data limits may vary by report. Though we cannot accommodate special historical data requests, you can modify the reporting range filters in reports to access historical data.

Can vendors get the same return reports, ledger reports, or active listings report that sellers have?

Unlike Amazon Seller Central, there are no seller-fulfilled orders direct to customers. As a result, certain information is not available to vendors. The reports detailed earlier outline the current collection of available reports.

Is there an Amazon Vendor Central Sales report?

Yes, we detailed those options above.

Does Amazon Brand Analytics Vendor Central offer the same reports as Sellers?

Yes, there is parity between Vendors and Sellers.

Is there an Amazon Vendor Central API integration? What about the legacy EDI Amazon Vendor Central Service?

Yes, see our post Unlocking Amazon Vendor Central Data With New API for a deep dive into the new API.

Where can I learn more about Amazon advertising reports?

Amazon provides a robust collection of documents for the Amazon Advertising API.