Amazon announced its new “Make an Offer” experience that allows customers to negotiate even lower prices on thousands of items.
If prices are agreed upon, customers can then purchase the items at a savings from the listing price, according to a press release. Initially more than 150,000 items from Amazon sellers are enabled with the “Make an Offer” experience across sports and entertainment, collectibles, coins and fine art.
The new feature will expand to hundreds of thousands of items from sellers in 2015. Sellers enable the “Make an Offer” feature for items to show customers they are willing to negotiate the listed price. When a customer selects “Make an Offer” on an item’s detail page, they can enter and submit a new price.
The seller will receive the customer’s lower price offer through an email, and can accept, reject or counter the offer. The seller and customer can continue to negotiate through email until the negotiation is complete.
When the seller accepts the customer’s offer, the customer is notified and can place the item into their shopping cart for checkout and purchase.
“In a recent survey of our sellers, nearly half of the respondents told us that the ability to negotiate prices with customers would be important to drive more sales on Amazon,” said Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace in the press release.
The “Make an Offer” feature is not an auction format. All negotiations are private between individual customers and sellers. A seller is able to accept a customer’s offer at any time. The intention is to lower prices, and a customer negotiating with a seller will never pay more than the listed price.