I found that some of the products in my store have completely different prices and merchants than the demo store. Please check the attachment for further detail.

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#2 Using ASIN.pdf477.57 KBgo7
Pricing and Merchants difference.pdf459.43 KBgo7

Comments

rfay’s picture

rfay
he,him
Primary language English
Location Palisade, CO, USA
commented

The item specifier in Amazon is the ASIN, which is Amazon's unique item number. On the Amazon Store item page, it's the last part of the URL. I can't compare using your PDF, because it doesn't show the ASIN in the URL. Remember that Amazon may offer the "same" item more than one way at more than one price.

I am interested in this. It could be a bug, or it could have something to do with maintenance of the demo site, which is not mine. But please check this carefully:

  1. Find the ASIN of the item you're suspicious about
  2. Look at it on your site (amazon_store/item/<asin>)
  3. Look at it on the demo site (alonovo.com/amazon_store/item/<asin>
  4. Look at it on Amazon.com (just search for the ASIN)

Please let me know your results.

go7’s picture

go7 commented
StatusFileSize
new Using ASIN.pdf477.57 KB

I found the book originally on your first store page. I have completely different books on my first page, so I looked up the ASIN (0618013245). I only used the # without writing ASIN in front. If you do so most of the merchants are the same on both websites, but not all.

The original price on your website and on Amazon is $13.57, but after I searched the ASIN on the demo website, I was not able to get back to this price. I tried it in Firefox (previously used Chrome), but the prices were now starting from $1.22 and the merchants were different (amazon did not show up as merchant at all).

If you search for the book title you get yet another price, $9.95.

When you look at the attachment you will see that a book title search will show different results on my website and on the demo website. This is caused by the fact that I searched books on mine, and ALL on the demo website. If you choose the same criteria, the results are the same.

Some of the very low prices might be used books. Amazon has similar prices, but way more than shown on either of our sites. Also there is no mentioning that the very cheap book might be used, which can lead to a lot of confusion with potential customers.

I had to compress the pictures for being able to upload them. I hope the quality is still ok.

rfay’s picture

rfay
he,him
Primary language English
Location Palisade, CO, USA
commented
Title: Pricing and Merchants different than Demo Site » Offer prices and merchants change often in the Amazon Product Advertising API

Offer prices and merchants change often in the Amazon Product Advertising API

I think if you clear your cache, you'll see that your offers (the formal term for the merchant+price) are the same as Alonovo.com right now. http://alonovo.com/amazon_store/item/0618013245.

Remember that Amazon Store caches the offers for performance. How long it retains them depends on what you set in the Amazon settings storage tab (admin/settings/amazon/storage). So if you set it for a long time (inappropriate), your offers would mostly be invalid pretty often.

I recommend setting the caching at 12 hours.

go7’s picture

go7 commented
Title: Offer prices and merchants change often in the Amazon Product Advertising API » Used book issue

Followed the instructions and that reset the pricing, which is good.

There is still the issue that customers don't know that the cheap price is for used books, nor do they initially have the option to get a used book. So unless they search the book title or ASIN they will not see the cheaper versions. If a customers does that on the other hand, it's confusing why the same book shows up with so many different prices and no explanation is given.

rfay’s picture

rfay
he,him
Primary language English
Location Palisade, CO, USA
commented

I believe that the search to Amazon specifies only New items. But it does not exclude Amazon sellers, independents who offer various prices for new items. If you have a counter-example, please provide it (with the URL on Amazon, showing the exact seller, and the URL and seller on any Amazon Store site.

go7’s picture

go7 commented

I'm not sure if this is what you are asking for but e.g.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933372605/ref=olp_product_details?ie=U... product page that indicates how many new and used books
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1933372605/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8... the new books
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1933372605/sr=/qid=/ref=olp_tab_u... used books

It would be great if that layout could be integrated into the amazon store, so customers can choose new or used version of the book.

I have an Amazon affiliate store and integrated it to another Drupal website. The downside with the affiliate stores is that when a customer wants to choose a used book, they are redirected to the Amazon website (same with Kindle products). You can see the affiliate ID in the initial link first, and then according to Amazon cookies are used to track the customer.

I would just prefer that customers could stay on my website instead of being redirected to amazon for these things. Also when you setup affiliate stores with Amazon directly then you can choose categories etc.

rfay’s picture

rfay
he,him
Primary language English
Location Palisade, CO, USA
commented
Title: Used book issue » New vs Used items
Status: Active » Fixed

I have confirmed that Amazon_store module currently searches only NEW items. In the search to amazon, Condition = New is the default. I think it would be complicated to represent the additional data required for a used search, showing the condition in the UI.

However, what you get now is nothing but NEW. If you find some counterexample, I'll be happy to look at it (please give me the ASIN).

At this time I have no plans to support used items.

I assume you now understand about Amazon "sellers" or "merchants" - that many sellers sell new items on Amazon.com. I am adding a feature for the next release that allows you to search only things sold by Amazon.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

goodwillhinton’s picture

goodwillhinton commented

Any ETA on the ability to search only for items sold by Amazon?

Thanks! Fantastic module!

rfay’s picture

rfay
he,him
Primary language English
Location Palisade, CO, USA
commented
Title: New vs Used items » Allow specification of Amazon.com as only vendor
Category: bug » feature
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

There are no used items available with this module at this time, and I have no plans to support that as it's difficult.

It is possible to specify only Amazon.com as the vendor, rather than all "new" vendors. I'll take a look at that the next time I work on the module. No promises about when. Patches are accepted.

goodwillhinton’s picture

goodwillhinton commented

I figured out how to set the vendors you want to show up in the list of merchants.

I have no idea or experience in creating patches so I will just reference the lines to edit.

In amazon_store_module:

On line 858 - $parameters['MerchantId'] = "All"
and line 908 - 'MerchantId' => "All"

"All" will provide a list of the lowest prices from all vendors including Amazon.
"Amazon" will provide just Amazon pricing.
"Featured" will provide the vendors that are displayed when you click the "Add to Shopping Cart" button on the product detail page on Amazon.

Hope that helps.

tomt-2’s picture

tomt-2 commented

From the AWS Documentation on the Field MerchantId:

Filter the list of offerings returned by ItemLookup by the merchant offering the product. If not specified, Amazon is assumed to be the merchant for all requests.

Setting MerchantId to "All" returns pricing information for Amazon and all other vendors.

US only: You may also use the value "Featured," in which case Amazon E-Commerce Service (ECS) returns the same merchant that is displayed when you click the "Add to Shopping Cart" button on the product detail page.

Make sure to use a Merchant ID and not a Seller ID for the value of MerchantId. Seller IDs are not supported.

So, above patch only works if the Amazon Locale is set to US.

Brief summary:
As Dignan writes in #11 you can use Amazon, All, Featured and a Merchant ID when the locale is US.
If the locale is something else like UK, DE, FR, JP, CA you can just use Amazon and All.

Small problem:
If you use Amazon as the MerchantID and Amazon does not acually sell the product, and just other merchants are offering it you see "Make other selections first" in the dropdown box.

In case of populating the MerchantID with Amazon, I would not show the search result at all for products not offered by Amazon itself and also not show a dropdown box if there is only one merchant (in this case Amazon is the only merchant)

rfay’s picture

rfay
he,him
Primary language English
Location Palisade, CO, USA
commented
Title: Allow specification of Amazon.com as only vendor » Allow specification of Amazon.com as only vendor.
Status: Active » Fixed

CVS version has specification of Amazon.com as only vendor.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.