Amazon Customer Insights: The Must Know Details

A tried-and-true method for sellers to increase conversions is getting to know their customers – through their buying behavior and patterns, frequency, and personas. All of this will help them customize and tailor their product assortment, improve their seller performance, and most importantly, receive positive customer feedback.

Last summer, Amazon rolled out Customer Insights, a pay-to-play program where sellers can solicit customer feedback about why they buy, what they like, and what their buying habits are. Each insight is comprised of a one-question survey that customers can then use to their advantage to see what factors matter most to their customers during their buying process.

However, the main concern that online retailers seem to be having (and which is likely holding back the program from truly taking off) is the price to participate in the program. Today, the cost to use Amazon Customer Insights is five dollars per response, with a minimum survey size of 100. With that being said, the minimum investment for a seller is $500 for a one-question survey. Beyond those 100 respondents, Amazon won’t share any data about the cohort chosen for your sample.

To begin using the program, Amazon offers three premade questions to ask consumers, based on the following categories: purchase behavior, product awareness, and product opinion. You can also create a customized question based on the exact information you are trying to garner. Some examples of built-in questions are below:

• How did you first hear about our product?
• How likely are you to recommend our product to others?
• What is the most important factor in your selection of our product?

Once you have landed on the question you are going to ask, you can pick up to four groups to target:

1. Amazon customers who have purchased your products
2. Amazon customers who have viewed your products
3. Amazon customers who viewed your products, but didn’t buy
4. Amazon customers who bought a similar product in the same category

After the question and target groups have been pinpointed, you will submit the program plan to Amazon and they will respond back within a few days. The final price for the Customer Insights survey to go live will depend on the complexity of the proposal. Once your campaign period has ended, Amazon will send you a response report with the survey results as well as the number and percentage of customers who chose each answer, to keep for your records.

Although the pricing model to partake in the program is rather expensive, the results could outweigh the upfront cost if the question is specific enough and correlates back to a specific data point and useful information for your catalog.

A few examples of when it might be worthwhile to take advantage of Customer Insights are when you are figuring out which products to include or exclude in a bundle deal, what products to stock up on before the holidays or a big sale, what customers in a new category you’re in are looking for, or gauging customer satisfaction on a certain product or brand. You can begin your Insights survey in Seller Central.