Amazon now calls the Buy Box the featured offer. It is the one offer a shopper buys when they press Add to Cart or Buy Now on a product page, and on a listing with several sellers it takes most of the sales. Winning it is not a matter of being cheapest. Amazon weighs the price the shopper pays, how fast and how reliably the order arrives, whether the offer is in stock, and how the seller performs.
This post explains what the featured offer is, what makes an offer eligible, and how to use one number Amazon will calculate for you: the featured offer expected price. With DataDoe connected to Claude, you can ask for that number on the SKUs that lost the Buy Box, set it against your own costs, and decide whether a lower price is worth it before anything changes on Amazon.
"Buy Box" is the name sellers still use. In Seller Central, the reports and the Selling Partner API, Amazon uses "featured offer". When a guide says an offer is "Buy Box eligible", Seller Central says "featured offer eligible". Both mean the offer is allowed to compete for the button. Eligible does not mean winning.
Two details catch people out:
Amazon does not publish its formula, but the inputs are well known and appear in its own seller help:
Because only one of these is price, cutting the price is the wrong first move when the real problem is stock, delivery speed or a performance metric.
For sellers, Amazon calculates a featured offer expected price (FOEP) per SKU. In Amazon's words, it is the listing price "at or below which a seller can expect to become the featured offer", before promotions. Amazon is clear that it is not a guarantee: competing offers keep changing, and delivery to a given customer can still decide the result.
The answer comes with a status, and the status is often more useful than the number:
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VALID_FOEP: Amazon computed a price. If yours is above it, price is probably what is holding you back.NO_COMPETING_OFFER: there is no other offer to beat on this SKU.OFFER_NOT_ELIGIBLE: your offer cannot be featured right now. A lower price will not fix this; look at stock, condition, delivery and account health.ASIN_NOT_ELIGIBLE: the ASIN itself is not eligible for a featured offer.OFFER_NOT_FOUND: Amazon could not find an offer for that SKU.With a valid result, Amazon also returns the offer that is featured now and the offer that would most likely be featured if you stayed above the expected price, each with its seller, condition and price.
DataDoe exposes this calculation as a read Action, AMAZON_LISTINGS_FEATURED_PRICE_ESTIMATE, for Seller Central accounts. Claude sends the SKUs, DataDoe asks Amazon, and the full Amazon response comes back for each SKU. You can add a location (country and postal code) to see the estimate for shoppers in one place, which matters when delivery speed decides the winner.
It is a read, so it works with the account on "Read only" access, and nothing on the listing changes. Like every Action type, it stays off until an organization owner switches it on in Settings > Actions. DataDoe's docs keep read Actions for checks and send analysis to the data tables, so the workflow below starts in the tables and asks Amazon only about a short list of SKUs.
avg_buybox_percentage in the profit by SKU table is Amazon's share of page views where the Buy Box showed your offer, per child ASIN and day, with B2B and B2C variants. Amazon can deliver it up to three days late and revise it for 30 days.amazon_item_offers holds the Buy Box prices, the lowest prices, and every seller's offer with its landed price and FBA and Buy Box flags, per ASIN and condition.amazon_competitive_summaries keeps Amazon's latest view of each ASIN: featured buying options, the lowest-priced offers, reference prices and similar items. amazon_competitive_offer_promotions lists the promotions on those offers. last_seen_at is when DataDoe looked, not when a promotion began.amazon_notifications_any_offer_changed records Amazon's offer and Buy Box change events, usually within about two hours of Amazon publishing them. amazon_notifications_pricing_health records offers that lost eligibility because of an uncompetitive price.The offer, summary and notification tables are not in the default dataset. Turn them on in Settings > Data. Notifications start from the day you enable them, so there is no Buy Box history before that.
If you decide to move a price, Claude can do it through a write Action, AMAZON_LISTINGS_PRICING_UPDATE. The safe order is a dry run, then AMAZON_LISTINGS_PRICING_UPDATE_VERIFY, which asks Amazon to preview the new price without applying it, then the update itself. The update changes one price audience, such as every buyer or Amazon Business buyers, and leaves the others alone.
Actions stay off until you enable them, most AI clients ask before a change, and every change is logged. The seller account also needs "Read and write" access in DataDoe. One thing to check first: if Seller Central has an automated pricing rule for that SKU and audience, Amazon applies the rule instead of the price you send.
For catching a lost Buy Box as it happens, see Amazon Buy Box loss tracking. For how repricing algorithms compete, see Amazon repricing strategy. For what the fees side of the floor contains, see the FBA fees breakdown. The changes Claude can make on Amazon through DataDoe are listed on Actions.
The offer a shopper buys with the Add to Cart or Buy Now button on a product page. Sellers usually call it the Buy Box.
That your offer is allowed to compete for the button. It depends on your selling plan, the item condition, price, delivery, stock and seller performance. Eligible offers still have to win.
Amazon's estimate of the listing price at or below which your offer can expect to become the featured offer, before promotions. It is not a guarantee.
Because Amazon also weighs delivery speed, fulfillment method, stock and seller performance. A cheaper but slower offer can lose to a faster one.
Only when you ask, after an organization owner enables the price update Action type and the account has "Read and write" access. Run the dry run and the Amazon preview first.