Disruption Insights: How Seller Behavior Shapes Your Brand’s Pricing Strategy

For years, Amazon’s price-matching algorithms focused primarily on what was happening within its own marketplace, with only a cautious eye on outside retailers offering better deals. That foundation is well documented and hardly surprising. What has changed is how far those eyes now wander. In its pledge to always deliver the best deal to shoppers, Amazon has expanded its tracking habits. Buy Box suppression and external price matching are no longer the exception; they are part of the playbook. And it isn’t stopping. Amazon is steadily working its way down the retail pyramid in search of the benchmark price that will confirm its status as the place to shop. 

In every pricing conversation, one question echoes louder than the rest: Who moved first? 

Brands often want to believe that Amazon is the instigator, driving authorized sellers to violate a company’s advertised pricing policies,  hurting that company’s brand equity in the marketplace. The reality is more complicated. In many cases, Amazon is not the first mover, but is a fast-follower. Its algorithms are tuned to scan the wider retail landscape and respond quickly to external signals. When an authorized  seller drops their price below a company’s MAP or an unauthorized seller drops their prices below the MSRP for that product , Amazon often mirrors it, sometimes within minutes, sometimes within hours. That small shift can set off a chain reaction that is difficult to stop. 

This is where the headache begins. A single drop by one seller on or off the marketplace can trigger Amazon to match that price. Once this happens, the integrity of advertised pricing across the ecosystem weakens. Other retailers feel pressure to match others’ pricing, and before long, the brand’s carefully planned advertised pricing architecture is eroded. 

But does it really matter who moved first? Or is it just as important to understand who participated and how quickly? Regardless of which seller is the first mover, the broader damage to the brand comes from the sequence of reactions that follow. Over time, patterns emerge. Certain sellers are more frequent and more aggressive. Some categories trigger faster responses than others. The rhythm of these movements tells you more about the health of your pricing strategy than a single first step ever could. 

This is where Precision eControl Disruption Insights stand out. The platform doesn’t just capture the obvious drop in pricing, it goes deeper. It provides comprehensive, frequent insights into which seller is disruptive, who is not, and how seller behavior patterns repeat over time. That perspective helps brands make smarter decisions around distribution, authorized seller relationships, and promotions, so they are not only reacting to disruption, but actively shaping a healthier marketplace. 

There are practical steps every brand can take to build that resilience: 

• Monitor the relevant websites for your industry, including key marketplaces and eCommerce sites. 

• Identify the sellers who consistently cause advertised pricing disruption, independent of other sellers, noting both the breadth and depth of the disruption. 

• Watch how quickly disruption spreads across categories to understand where you are most vulnerable. 

• Address authorized sellers directly through your company’s advertised pricing policies (i.e. MAP) if you have any in place (particularly in North America).  Consult your legal counsel for advice on your specific policy and enforcement strategy.  

• Strengthen relationships with authorized partners who comply with your company’s policies. 

• Review how promotions influence advertised pricing behavior and plan them with visibility across all channels. 

Taking these steps shifts the focus away from reacting to a single, disruptive price and toward managing the broader ecosystem in a way that protects long-term brand value. Identifying the first mover should not be the insight to follow. The real insight comes from recognizing the rhythm of how advertised prices shift across your brand’s landscape, who joins in, and how often it occurs. These patterns reveal the sellers who test boundaries most often, the categories that trigger the quickest responses, and the places where your pricing (and thus brand equity) is most fragile. 

Over time, this perspective matters far more than a single drop in isolation. In the end, the story of who moved first fades. What remains is whether you can read the behavior that follows and use it to strengthen your resilience.