Anyone understand Amazon pricing?

[Ulf Dittmer]

I've been looking at (lusting for, actually) a few BBC books and DVDs, and finally saw that they are about to be released. Off to Amazon! Amazon.de, that is. The total (for 3 DVD sets and a book) was 162 Euro. Ugh. Rather steep. I'm not going to pay 30 Euro for a single DVD. Of course those are UK imports, but that's ridiculous.

So I'm hopping over to Amazon.co.uk to compare prices. Lo and behold, it's much cheaper over there - about 87 Euro, which includes shipping to Germany. So I throw in a couple more DVDs -for 14 Euro instead of 34 at amazon.de, which had made me hesitate for quite a while- and I am one happy camper. Clearly, Amazon UK wants (and gets) my business, while Amazon DE doesn't.

Is there something I'm missing about this pricing? Both Apple and IKEA have recently been taken to task by the European Commission for widely differing prices for the same product in different countries. Is Amazon next, or what's going on?

[Ulf Dittmer]

I have been reminded by someone more knowledgeable than myself that Amazon is of course not a manufacturer, but a distributor. For one thing, that means they're not comparable to the likes of Apple and IKEA. And it also means that they may have different sources in different countries, which may charge them different prices. Still, the price differential is quite sizeable.

[Mark Spritzler]

I still think that is odd that from another Amazon you can get a different price, no problem.

Anyway I think a Car company is getting brought up about different prices, I think it was BMW with the different prices between the US and Canada.

Mark

[Tony Alicea]

If you want to double check, delete your cookies and browsing history. Elementary

[Darya Akbari]

Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:
Is there something I'm missing about this pricing?

The same is valid about the percentage Amazon subsidiaries give to their customers. At Amazon.com you get up to 40% on books.

To me it depends on the book (or item) quote they sell. If it's high they can afford to give high percentage, if it's low they can not.

And of course if you go after BBC material at Amazon.de you will have a much lower quote than at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk or even Amazon.ca

[Ulf Dittmer]

Originally posted by Darya Akbari:
And of course if you go after BBC material at Amazon.de you will have a much lower quote than at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk or even Amazon.ca

Why "of course"? The opposite was happening here (much lower quote on amazon.co.uk than on amazon.de).

[Arvind Mahendra]

I don't even understand their sales ranking system. Sometimes the sales rank for a book is like 75,000 but 3 days later its 159,982 and then upto 45,000 a week later.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Originally posted by Chunnard Singh:
I don't even understand their sales ranking system. Sometimes the sales rank for a book is like 75,000 but 3 days later its 159,982 and then upto 45,000 a week later.

That sales figure change on a weekly basis shouldn't be a surprise. I would imagine that it doesn't take many more books sold to get from 75000 to 45000.

[Bhiku Mhatre]

There may be couple of factors.
1) Local taxation: The state taxes a lot to its citizens and business.
2) Labor costs: The cost of labor is one of the (if not the) highest in the world. In manufacturing industry, very high productivity of German workers compensate for high labor costs. It is likely that efficiency model of manufacturing industry; do not readily fit into a logistics company. And consequence is rise in unit delivery cost. On the contrary, very backbone of logistic industry is one of the (if not the) best in world. German infrastructure, notably its autobahns, airports and rail network, should more than compensate for high labor costs.

3) Regulated Market: Upon posing a question of volume discount / loyalty program to Hugendubel saleswoman here in Frankfurt, I got a reply, there is German regulation that forbids book being sold under certain amount and book prices are set by an authority.

[Paul Clapham]

I don't know. There was a book I wanted to buy; amazon.ca wanted $77 for it. But amazon.com wanted $37 for it, only I would have to pay shipping and wait a week or so. Since the US and CDN dollars are now approximately equal, and I had already been waiting over a year for it to be published, I bought it from the US.