You might have heard or have got first-hand experience of going out of stock prior to your calculations. Products ‘out of stock’ negatively impact sales and create a bad sales history. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to re-establish its sales reputation on Amazon. So, here are some Inventory Stock Management tips to reduce overselling cases on Amazon.
A quick run-through over the topics covered in the blog-
- What is Overselling (out of stock)
- Impacts of Overselling
- Reasons for Overselling
- Tips to reduce overselling on Amazon in 2023
- How can CedCommerce Help?
- Final Conclusion
What is Overselling?
Many online businesses face the tragic situations of overselling and bear the negative impact as the repercussions. Overselling is a tragic situation. And, it occurs when your products are demanded in the market but you cannot supply them because of the unavailability of your inventory.
Despite the product’s unavailability in the seller’s inventory, the product is displayed on the result page. Therefore, customers place demands but only to know that the product order has been cancelled! Such situations are not only undesirable and furious for customers but also for many potential sellers.
Impacts Of Overselling
You lose your sale
The primary impact is that you lose customers. Probably not just one but many who have placed orders considering your good customer reviews and sales history.
Losing customers also means losing their trust and drawing brickbats.
Strengthening Your Competitors
Your lost prospective customers are just upset but not helpless to wait for you. So, the best thing they can do is to look at your competitors who are selling similar or even the same products. And make a purchase from them.
This way, your competitors get a chance to make sales and improve their sales history.
Create a weak sales history
The impact of your insufficient inventory lowers down your product’s ranking from Amazon’s search result page. As a result, when you come back and relist your product, it takes time for Amazon to reconsider your product.
Furthermore, the negative sales history (due to order cancellation or negative customers’ reviews) makes it difficult for the product to compete in the mainstream.
For quite a long time, as a seller, you will have to struggle to hit the top search result list again.
Decreased productivity and efficiency
Poor stock management ruins your business plans and scheduled business activities. Moreover, it significantly raise the rate of inefficiency and poor productivity.
The other inefficiencies caused by insufficient inventory are –
- Lack of sufficient quantity
- Inefficient order fulfilment
- Inaccurate inventory calculations
Boost your sales by adding the Amazon Top Selling Products to your Inventory.
Reasons for Overselling on Amazon
Inaccurate Inventory calculations
Why will you ever go out of stock, if you actually know the current status of your inventory? You will certainly draft a robust plan to make sure that your products are shipped to you in time. So, if you have ever landed up in a situation like this or are curious about how one can be out of stock, then this is one of the primary reasons why you have oversold your products.
In addition to this, inaccurate inventory calculations can worsen the entire business plan and lead to bankruptcy in extreme cases.
Methods of Product Sourcing
The method that you have chosen for product sourcing is the main reason why you don’t get your inventory on time. Also, your manufacturer, wholesaler or Drop Shipping company, etc, cannot be under your control all the time.
The only measure you can take is to place an order for the days before your actual stock is out.
Manual Inventory Stock Management
Manual inventory calculations are mistake-prone. More importantly, it takes a lot of time to manually compile data on a daily basis.
As a result, real-time inventory update and synchronization are difficult to be handled manually, especially while dealing with large inventory.
Less Control Over Inventory
Many Amazon sellers sell through Amazon FBA, where picking, packing and shipping is done by Amazon. Most of the sellers also store their stock in Amazon’s warehouse.
This sometimes poses problems for sellers to calculate the actual inventory. Out-of-sight, issues arise when not directly managing the inventory and making calculations.
Variety of Products
Sometimes selling a variety of products create a management problem. Also, updating the stock on an e-store like Amazon is quite a cumbersome and hectic process. So as a seller, you have to manage and keep a keen eye on the orders and update the stock on Amazon. Therefore, the exact inventory is shown and users order the product actually in the stock.
These are the probable reasons why overselling can happen. There might be even more reasons that can lead you in such an undesirable condition, to mention –
- The discrepancy between recorded and actual stock
- Sudden demand hike
- Lack of updating across all marketplace channels
Whatever reason it might be, but the fact of the matter remains the same that you want a way out.
Let’s now discuss the ways through which you can keep your inventory updated and prevent yourself from these Amazon overselling conditions.
Tips to Reduce Overselling on Amazon in 2023
Accurate Forecasting
Forecasting is very essential to order the right products at the right time and in the right quantity.
Such high demanded products in good quantity do not only generate a good amount but also keep the number of customers satisfied.
Based on future marketing plans or promotional plans you must calculate the demanding hike that you can get. Keeping in mind all these future changes, you can finalize your stock amount.
Automate Your Inventory
Automating the inventory is the best thing. Connecting your e-store with Amazon using integrators comes with advanced features of updated inventory management, order and shipment management, and safety stock calculations.
Allow a well-coded and less error-prone mechanism to update and calculate your inventory. Your accurate inventory stock management, safety stock calculation, and cross channel update will be done automatically without any mistake.
Optimizing Inventory Analytics Tools
Inventory analytics tool gives the entire data of your inventory in a systematic form and bifurcates between what sells in abundance and what sells too low.
This gives you an idea of what products to stress on and others that need less attention. Based on the demand and supply of the product on Amazon, you can fix your inventory budget and order everything in an accurate amount.
Analytics tools allow you to avoid overstock and under stock conditions.
Remember Your ABCs
Practice tighter control over higher-value items by grouping inventory items into A, B, and C categories. This will enable you to strategize specifically for each group.
Never Compromise With Quality
Even if you have sufficient quantity, but if they are low in quality, your customers will return your products and you know the impacts thereafter.
No matter the quantity, always focus on the quality. What you sell should be accepted by your customers.
Switch To Dropshipping
There is also a way out! If you feel handling inventory way difficult for you then you can easily switch to drop shipping, which is one of the best ways of product sourcing and tie-up with a dropshipping company, wholesaler, manufacturer.
The dropshipping company takes care of your inventory, storage, and shipping of the products. There are many advantages and disadvantages of drop shipping as well but the fact of the matter is that you will not have to worry about your inventory.
How Can CedCommerce Help?
CedCommerce is a global leading tech-solution company that gives integrating services across multiple frameworks and more than 40+ marketplaces. It includes some of the eCommerce giants like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, etc.
CedCommerce provides the best tech solutions with special features pertaining to Inventory stock Management. Following are the important feature that you can enjoy while selling Amazon and other marketplaces –
- Real-time Inventory Synchronization between Framework e-store and Amazon
- Real Total Inventory Update
- Inventory Notification as per the stock availability of the product
- Automatic Inventory calculation to allow you to calculate safety stock beforehand.
Final Conclusion
Overselling on Amazon is a huge problem and is majorly a result of a lack of inventory stock management and improper synchronization across e-store and multiple selling channels. So, it’s important to always have the upper hand in the product category. The quality and quantity of the product at any given point of time determines our future in eCommerce on competitive marketplaces like Amazon.