Key takeaways:
- Analyze competitors holistically. Compare products, listings, pricing, keywords, PPC activity, reviews, sales performance, and AI shopping visibility.
- Use competitor keyword research to identify relevant high-volume and long-tail terms and incorporate them into a data-driven Amazon keyword strategy.
- Use tools like Helium 10, Jungle Scout, Keepa, ChatGPT Deep Research, and Perplexity to uncover competitor insights and market trends.
- Use competitor weaknesses, customer feedback, and market gaps to improve your product, listing, pricing, and advertising strategy while staying compliant with Amazon's rules.
At ePlaybooks, we watch thousands of sellers enter the Amazon marketplace every year, and one truth consistently stands out: the sellers who win are usually the ones who understand their competition best.
Amazon competitor analysis is the process of studying competing products, listings, pricing, keywords, advertising, customer feedback, and market performance to identify opportunities for your own business. The goal isn't to copy competitors. It is to understand what is working, identify gaps, and use those insights to build a stronger strategy.
Read on as we explore how to analyze Amazon competitors, uncover their best keywords, and turn those insights into a stronger strategy, without violating Amazon's rules.
What is Amazon seller competitor analysis?
Amazon competitor analysis is the process of evaluating competing products, listings, keywords, pricing, advertising, reviews, and performance to identify opportunities for your own Amazon business. It helps sellers gain a competitive edge by understanding how their competitors position themselves in the market. This analysis involves several components, including:
- Product listing: This involves comparing product titles, descriptions, bullet points, images, and the overall listing presentation. It also involves analyzing the quality of your competitors’ product information.
- Pricing: This involves analyzing competitors' pricing strategies, including discounts and promotions, and comparing value propositions.
- Keywords and SEO: This involves identifying keywords competitors use to rank products in search results. It also involves looking at keyword optimization techniques.
- Sales volume: It involves estimating competitors' sales volume and trends over time, as well as analyzing best-selling products and market share.
- Customer review: This involves examining customer feedback, ratings, and reviews, and understanding what customers like or dislike about your competitors' products.
- Advertising strategy: This involves tracking competitors' use of Amazon Sponsored Ads and other advertising tactics.
- Market share: This involves assessing the share of the market held by your competitors.
- AI shopping visibility: This involves tracking which competitor listings appear in AI-powered shopping responses for relevant product queries.
The objective is not to reproduce a competitor's strategy word-for-word. Instead, use competitor data to answer questions such as:
- What keywords are driving visibility in my category?
- Which product features do customers value most?
- What customer complaints are competitors failing to address?
- Which competitors are gaining visibility?
- Where are competitors spending their advertising budget?
- Which products appear repeatedly in Amazon's search and AI shopping experiences?
- What opportunities exist that competitors have overlooked?
Why conduct an Amazon seller competitor analysis?
Amazon competitor analysis helps sellers identify market gaps, improve listings, discover valuable keywords, and make better pricing and advertising decisions.
Identify market gaps and opportunities.
An Amazon seller competitor analysis can help you identify unmet customer needs, product gaps, and opportunities that your competitors may have overlooked. This valuable information can help you improve your product and marketing strategies.
Optimize product listings
Studying high-performing competitor listings can show you which product information, benefits, and keywords deserve closer attention in your own listing. By examining competitor titles, descriptions, images, bullet points, and A+ Content, you can identify patterns that may contribute to visibility and conversions.
This information can then guide optimizing your listing after competitor analysis, including improving your title, bullet points, images, product description, and keyword placement..
Improve pricing strategy
Competitor analysis gives you a clearer picture of market pricing so you can position your products competitively without automatically starting a price war. It allows you to compare pricing strategies, including discounts and promotions. With this knowledge, you can set competitive prices while maintaining profitability.
Improve keyword optimization
Competitor keyword research helps you discover relevant search terms that you may have overlooked and prioritize them based on relevance and commercial potential.This should be part of a broader Amazon keyword research strategy that considers search demand, competition, relevance, conversion potential, and customer intent.
Instead of blindly copying every keyword a competitor appears to rank for, identify the terms that are genuinely relevant to your product. You can then incorporate appropriate keywords naturally into your title, bullet points, product description, backend search terms, and advertising campaigns.
Strategic decision-making
Regular competitor analysis keeps you informed about market trends, customer preferences, and emerging strategies. By understanding what sets successful competitors apart, you can develop unique selling propositions that differentiate your products or services from the competition.
This helps you make informed decisions across various aspects of your Amazon business.
Adapt to market changes.
Carrying out regular competitor analysis helps you stay current with the marketplace dynamics. You can easily make timely adjustments to your business strategy.
Enhances customer service.
By analyzing competitors' customer service approaches and finding out what customers want and do not want, you can identify areas for improvement in your own service quality and response times.
How to identify your competitors on Amazon
The easiest way to identify Amazon competitors is to search your most important product keywords and track the products that consistently compete for visibility and sales.
Use broad terms and gradually narrow your search to more specific, long-tail keywords. You want to use both broad terms and specific terms, as this will give you a detailed view of your competition landscape.
Look out for the products that consistently rank at the top for your chosen keywords. These are likely your main competitors. However, don't limit your analysis to direct competitors.
Include:
- Direct competitors selling similar products
- Substitute products solving the same customer problem
- Premium competitors
- Budget competitors
- Fast-growing smaller brands
- Products that dominate important keyword searches
- Products that frequently appear in Amazon's recommended shopping experiences
Use competitive intelligence tools.
Amazon research tools can make competitor discovery faster by providing estimated sales, revenue, keyword ranking, pricing, and product-performance data. Tools such as Jungle Scout, Helium 10, and Seller Assistant can help you investigate competing products and market trends.
Sellers can use Helium 10 for competitor keyword and ASIN research. Its research capabilities are great for investigating competing ASINs, identifying keyword opportunities, and comparing product performance. This can help you build a more informed list of competitors and search terms to investigate further.
You can also use AI-assisted research tools such as ChatGPT Deep Research and Perplexity to accelerate competitive intelligence. For example, you can use AI research to organize publicly available information about competitors, compare product positioning, identify recurring themes across reviews, summarize competitor strengths and weaknesses, and generate questions for deeper investigation.
AI should be treated as a research assistant rather than a source of guaranteed Amazon performance data. Always verify important findings against Amazon and reliable first-party or specialist data sources.
How to analyze your competitors on Amazon
Here’s a simple step-by-step approach to analyzing your competitors on Amazon:
- Analyze your competitors’ product features
- Analyze competitors’ product listings
- Study your competitor keywords
- Track Alexa for Shopping keyword share
- Study your competitors’ pricing strategies
- Study competitor sales performance
- Analyze your competitors’ advertising strategies
- Study customer feedback and reviews
- Use the Amazon Profit Analytics dashboard for benchmark comparisons
Analyze your competitors’ product features.
First, you want to create a checklist of your competitors’ product features so you can find ways to improve your offer and highlight the most important benefits in your product listing. Scan through your competitors’ product features and look for every feature you can find. You can arrange your list in a spreadsheet.
Once you have all your competitors’ product features listed, you can find out where your product is superior. You can look out for features they have that you don't. What features do you have that your competitors don't? In what areas can you improve your product features to gain a competitive advantage?
Analyze competitors’ product listings.
Once you've identified who your competitors are, it’s time to dig into the details of their product listings. A well-optimized listing can significantly influence your product’s rank and sales. By analyzing your competitor’s listing, you can gather insights into what works and what doesn’t.
Here are a few aspects of your competitors’ product listings to analyze:
- Product title: Pay attention to how they structure their product title. Are they using relevant keywords? Are the titles compelling and informative?
- Images: Look at the quality, quantity, and types of images used. Do they use lifestyle images, product details, or infographics? How well do these images sell their product?
- Bullet points and description: Amazon sellers who use engaging, benefit-driven bullet points and descriptions are more likely to convert customers. Look at how your competitors communicate their value proposition and unique selling point.
- A+ content: A+ content enhances product descriptions with images, comparison charts, and additional text. If your competitors use A+ content, examine how they highlight their product’s features and branding.
Study your competitor keywords
The safest way to “steal” competitor keywords is to identify relevant search terms competitors rank for, validate them against your own product, and use only the keywords that accurately describe what you sell. This is one of the most valuable parts of Amazon competitor research.
Start by identifying competitors that rank consistently for your target searches. Then use Amazon keyword research tools to investigate the terms associated with their listings.
Look for:
- High-volume keywords
- Long-tail keywords
- Product-specific terms
- Feature keywords
- Use-case keywords
- Problem-based searches
- Comparison terms
- Emerging search terms
Don't assume that every keyword associated with a competitor is worth targeting. Filter your findings based on relevance, search demand, competition, conversion potential, and your product's ability to satisfy the search intent.
Track Alexa for Shopping keyword share
Tracking which competitor products appear in Alexa for Shopping responses can provide a new competitive signal for measuring AI shopping visibility. Traditional Amazon competitive analysis focuses heavily on search rankings, advertising placements, and sales performance.
But as shoppers increasingly interact with Amazon through AI-powered shopping experiences, sellers should also pay attention to which products are surfaced in conversational shopping responses.
For important product queries, track:
- Which products are recommended.
- Which brands are mentioned.
- Which competitor listings appear repeatedly.
- What product attributes are highlighted.
- Which products are presented as alternatives.
- Whether your own product appears.
- Which keywords or shopping questions trigger competitor visibility.
This creates an emerging AI shopping keyword share metric. For example, if you track 50 high-value shopping queries and a competitor's products consistently appear in the responses while yours rarely appear, that competitor may have stronger visibility within the AI shopping experience for those intents. This should complement not replace traditional Amazon SEO, keyword ranking, advertising, and conversion analysis.
Study your competitors’ pricing strategies.
Pricing is one of the most critical factors in consumer decision-making on Amazon. Understanding your competitors' pricing strategies can help you position your product appropriately.
You want to ask yourself the following questions:
- Looking at their base price, how do competitors price their products compared to yours? Are they offering a premium or budget option?
- Are they running consistent promotions or offering discounts? Track these over time to understand trends.
- Is your competitor offering free shipping, or are shipping costs added? How does this influence their overall pricing?
Study competitor sales performance
Another crucial aspect you want to analyze is your competitors’ sales performance. Understanding your competitor's sales performance will give you a better sense of how they are doing in the marketplace. You can use several tools available that provide estimates of your competitors’ sales data. These tools include Jungle Scout, which offers insights into sales estimates, average monthly revenue, and best-seller ranks for individual competitors.
You can also use tools like Helium 10 and Keepa to get a detailed view of your competitors' sales trends over time.
Analyze your competitors’ advertising strategies.
Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising plays a huge role in how sellers gain visibility on the Amazon marketplace. Understanding the advertising strategies that make the most impact can help you optimize your own campaigns.
Here are a few ways to analyze your competitors’ advertising strategies:
Monitor competitor keyword visibility
Search your target keywords and observe which competitors consistently appear in Sponsored Products or Sponsored Brands placements.
If the same competitor appears frequently for a keyword, it may indicate that the term is strategically important to them. However, visibility alone does not prove profitability.
Analyze ad placements
Check where competitor ads appear:
- Search results
- Product detail pages
- Top-of-search placements
- Other Amazon shopping placements
This can provide insight into how aggressively competitors are pursuing visibility.
Use PPC intelligence tools
If you're comparing the best Amazon PPC software for competitor tracking, look for tools that provide useful competitive signals around keyword visibility, advertising activity, search terms, and campaign performance. Third-party tools can help identify patterns, but they generally cannot provide a competitor's actual bids, budgets, or Seller Central campaign data.
If you need additional help turning competitive advertising insights into campaigns, ePlayBooks' Amazon advertising services can help translate market intelligence into a structured PPC strategy.
Study customer feedback and reviews
Customer reviews can offer a wealth of information, not just for improving your product but for analyzing your competitors as well. Reviews reflect real customer experiences and provide insights into what customers love or dislike about a product:
Here’s how to analyze your competitors’ customer feedback:
- Pay attention to your competitors’ review quality and quantity. How many reviews do your competitors have? Are their ratings mainly positive, negative, or mixed?
- Look out for customer complaints. Negative reviews often highlight product flaws or unmet expectations. You can identify recurring complaints and use that information to improve your product or listing.
- Also, pay attention to positive customer reviews. Positive reviews can indicate features or qualities that customers particularly value. If these are things you don’t offer, consider incorporating them into your product or messaging.
Use the Amazon Profit Analytics dashboard for benchmark comparisons
The Amazon Profit Analytics dashboard can be used to benchmark your own profitability and performance against the competitive context you uncover through market research.
Rather than looking only at estimated competitor revenue, compare the broader economics of your business.
Depending on the data available to you, benchmark metrics such as:
- Revenue
- Units sold
- Average selling price
- Advertising spend
- Advertising efficiency
- Fees
- Cost of goods
- Profit margin
- Return-related costs
This distinction matters because a competitor generating more revenue does not necessarily have a healthier business.
Your objective should be to understand which competitive strategies can produce profitable growth, not simply which competitor appears to sell the most units.
What not to do when conducting Amazon seller competitor analysis
While studying your competitors is incredibly beneficial, simply copying their strategies or switching to their product offerings is never a good idea. Here are some things you should not do when conducting an Amazon seller competitor analysis:
- Don’t focus only on product price
It can be tempting to assume that lowering prices is the best way to beat your competitors. But while price is an important factor, focusing solely on undercutting competitors can be a race to the bottom. Lowering your price too much can devalue your product and ruin your profit margins.
Instead of focusing on product price only, look at the full scope of the competitor's offering. Consider other factors like product quality, add-ons like bundles, warranties, customer service, shipping speed, and customer reviews.
- Never copy your competitors blindly.
We know the saying that imitation is the best form of flattery. But this is not always so in business. Copying a competitor’s product listings, keywords, or marketing strategies without understanding the why behind their choices can lead to failure.
Just because a competitor is using a certain approach doesn’t mean it’s working for them or that it will work for you.
Instead, use your Amazon seller competitor analysis to understand what is working in the market, but adjust it to your unique selling proposition. Address unmet needs or offer something competitors don’t. Look at their weaknesses and innovate, rather than simply copying.
- Don’t overlook the smaller competitors.
It's easy to focus on top sellers and big brands, but this can cause you to overlook smaller, rising competitors who may not yet have significant market share but are growing quickly. So, include smaller competitors in your analysis. They may have innovative methods, higher customer satisfaction, or product offerings that your larger competitors don't offer. Understanding their strengths can give you insight into emerging trends.
- Don’t ignore your own data.
While competitor analysis is crucial, relying only on competitor data without considering your own performance can be risky. Every business is unique, and blindly following competitors without analyzing your own sales, reviews, and customer behavior may lead you down the wrong path. Instead, you want to combine competitor insights with data from your own performance.
How often should you conduct Amazon competitor analysis?
Most Amazon sellers typically conduct a deeper competitor analysis at least monthly while monitoring major changes such as pricing, rankings, reviews, and advertising more frequently.
However, a practical monitoring schedule could look like this:
- Daily or several times per week: Major price and advertising changes.
- Weekly: Keyword rankings, competitor visibility, promotions, and new listings.
- Monthly: Sales estimates, reviews, product changes, keyword gaps, and competitive positioning.
- Quarterly: Full competitor analysis and strategic review.
The faster your category changes, the more frequently you should monitor it.
Final thoughts
Competing on Amazon isn’t about guessing what the market wants. It’s about understanding it. A well-executed Amazon competitor analysis helps you uncover hidden opportunities, refine your product listings, strengthen your keyword strategy, improve your pricing approach, and deliver better customer experiences. If you want to work with the experts in conducting a thorough competitor analysis and uncovering new avenues for growth, the team at ePlaybooks is ready to help.
