According to a recent survey, over half (52 per cent) of Brits turn to Amazon to compare and benchmark prices when shopping. However, PriceSpy, the fully impartial price and product comparison service, has analysed over 125,000 products across both Amazon and Amazon Marketplace and has found that the online retail giant is rarely the cheapest.
PriceSpy’s analysis found Amazon had the cheapest price on over a quarter of products on its site (27 per cent of all qualifying products analysed), whilst Amazon Marketplace (for third-party sellers to sell new or used products alongside Amazon’s regular offerings) had the lowest price on 25 per cent of products. This means that, in around three out of four cases, shoppers are best off shopping elsewhere.
Amazon is most often the cheapest in these product categories:
- Car entertainment (cheapest on 60 per cent of products)
- Childrens’ boots & wellies (cheapest on 53 per cent of products)
- Drums & percussion (cheapest on 51 per cent of products)
And the least competitive in these product categories:
- Tablets (cheapest on 6 per cent of products)
- PC games (cheapest on 11 per cent of products)
- Projectors & screens (cheapest on 14 per cent of products)
With 16 per cent of Brits saying they plan to shop on Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale next week (11-12th October) – and 18 per cent saying they shopped on Prime Day last year – PriceSpy wants to encourage shoppers to comprehensively compare the price of products before they hit ‘Buy Now’ during Amazon’s sale.
Liisa Matinvesi-Bassett, UK Country Manager at PriceSpy, says: “Amazon has long established itself as the primary online marketplace for buying all manner of products, building a firm and loyal user base along the way. However, as eCommerce has matured, and more and more retailers have set up shop online, Amazon is no longer the only place to go to get a bargain. Shoppers can pick up products for the same price – if not cheaper – elsewhere. For that reason, it is a concern that so many consumers (52 per cent) say they use Amazon to compare and benchmark prices – as opposed to an impartial price comparison service – as this indicates that the majority of shoppers may be missing out on the best price.”
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