Market Share Analysis

Marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and others provide selling opportunities at the buy box and search result levels. Buy box is a competition to be the seller on listings. Search level is a competition to have listings show in shopper search results. Both areas can be measured to benchmark current performance and identify investments for improvement.

Measuring a brand’s buy box is relatively simple. It can be calculated by dividing owned traffic by total traffic to the listings, measured over a given time range. Capturing 100% of the buy box would indicate the brand is always the present seller and is capturing the demand for the listing on marketplace.

Measuring a brand’s capture of search is more complex and requires forethought. At any given moment, search results can be measured, however studying the results over larger time frames is more insightful. To measure search capture, we define search terms or categories of interest. We then tag those in trackers to report what listings and brands held the sponsored and non-sponsored placements in the search results. Once the tags are set, the search results are pulled consistently from multiple locations, knowing that the results are dynamic. With competition changing ad spend and listing attributes, search results are not expected to be the same throughout the day or even user to user. With consistent measurements, the share of search results can be graphed and presented as a percentage for different time windows to study how the market is evolving, and your brand is fitting within it.

When measuring search, it is standard to look at branded and non-branded search categories. Branded searches include your brand or product names. Those searches are from shoppers familiar with your offering and likely to convert. Understanding your dominance in those search results is important to understand if you need to be more defensive. Non-branded searches exclude your brand and product names. These are search terms you want to compete in. Understanding this can guide decisions in advertising, listing, and product evolution.

With market share measured from a buy box and search perspective, brands will then want to measure their driving variables to look for areas to improve. Buy box is primarily driven by fulfillment model, price, seller ranking, and proximity to the shopper. Search results are driven by ad spend, SEO relevance, conversion, customer reviews, volume, in-stock rates, and more.

Brandwoven has systems, teams, and processes to guide your brand through these measurements and make ongoing improvements to achieve your market share goals.