Amazon Business (B2B on Amazon)
Amazon Business pricing is a second price on your listing that only registered business customers see, plus an optional table of quantity discounts that lowers the per-unit price at higher order sizes. You set both in Seller Central after enrolling as an Amazon Business seller, and the right numbers sit a little under your consumer price and well above what a store pays you at wholesale.
Sellers get this wrong in two opposite directions. Some never set a business price, so business buyers see the consumer price and no reason to order in quantity. Others hear "B2B" and set business pricing at wholesale levels, then discover that their own stockists can buy the product cheaper on Amazon Business than from the brand's price sheet. This article is the arithmetic that keeps you between those two mistakes.
What business pricing actually is
Three separate things, all set per ASIN.
The business price. A single per-unit price shown to logged-in Amazon Business accounts instead of the consumer price. It can be the same as the consumer price, lower, or (rarely) higher. It is not visible to ordinary shoppers.
Quantity discounts. Up to several tiers, each a minimum quantity and a lower price, either as a fixed price or as an amount off. A buyer ordering above a tier's minimum gets that tier's price on every unit in the order.
Quote requests. For quantities above your top tier, a buyer can request a quote and you respond with a price for that specific quantity. This is the closest Amazon comes to a negotiated wholesale order and it is optional.
Business pricing does not change your fees: the referral fee applies to the business price actually paid, and the FBA fee is unchanged. Amazon does reduce the referral fee on the portion of very large business orders in some categories, and it is worth checking the current schedule for yours, but it is a modest effect and not the reason to set business prices.
The price ladder every brand should have
Before touching Seller Central, write down the whole ladder for one product, because the business price only makes sense in the context of the others. For a product at $24:
- Consumer price on Amazon: $24
- Business price: $22
- Quantity tier at 12 units: $21
- Quantity tier at 48 units: $20
- Quantity tier at 96 units: $19
- Wholesale price to a store: $12
- Distributor price: $8
Two rules hold the ladder together. The lowest business tier must stay above the wholesale price with a wide margin, so that no store or distributor can ever do better on Amazon Business than on your price sheet. And the tiers should map to real case quantities, because that is how the buyer's receiving department and your FBA stock both think.
A store pays $12 and sells at $24. An office pays $19 for 96 units and uses them. Those are different customers with different economics, and the gap between $19 and $12 is what keeps the retail channel intact. The store's side of that ladder, including what to quote and why, is in how to answer wholesale inquiries as an Amazon seller.
The arithmetic behind the business price
Take the $24 product again, landed cost $6, referral fee on a $22 business price about $3.30, FBA fee about $4.50. At the $22 business price you keep about $8.20 per unit, before ad spend. At the $19 tier for a 96-unit order you keep about $5.65 per unit, and the order needed no advertising to happen, so that $5.65 is real, not a number before TACoS.
Compare the wholesale unit: $12 to the store, about $1.20 freight, landed $6, net around $4.15. The business tier at $19 nets more per unit than wholesale does. That surprises sellers who assumed a "B2B" price had to be wholesale-deep. It does not. Business buyers on Amazon are paying for the convenience of Amazon, and they expect a discount from retail, not a trade price.
If your landed cost is higher, run the same lines. The floor for the deepest tier is the point where the net after referral and FBA fees is still comfortably above the net on a wholesale case. Below that, you are giving away margin to a buyer who would have paid more.
Where FBA and wholesale nets sit against each other across the whole business, not one order, is in Amazon FBA vs wholesale to retailers.
Setting it in Seller Central
Enroll as an Amazon Business seller under account settings if you have not. Then in Manage Inventory, each ASIN gains a business price field next to the consumer price, and a link to add quantity discounts.
Set the business price first. Then add tiers. Use fixed prices rather than amounts off; fixed prices survive consumer price changes without surprising anyone. Confirm the tier quantities match your case packs or multiples of them. Save, and check the listing from a business account if you have access to one; the business price and the discount table appear on the detail page for those buyers.
For bulk-friendly ASINs, consider the quote request setting and decide who will check for quotes. A quote request is a buyer with a large order in hand, and it is answered within a day or lost.
Automated repricing tools can move the business price with the consumer price. Be careful with them. A rule that keeps the business price a fixed amount under the consumer price will drag the business tiers down during a Lightning Deal and can, for the length of the deal, put the deepest tier under your wholesale price.
Keeping business prices above what stores pay
This is the rule that matters most for a brand with stockists, and it is the one that Amazon-only sellers do not have to think about until they have a store.
A store that finds it can buy your product on Amazon Business at $19 in quantity, when your price sheet says $12, is not going to be upset; $12 is still better. But a store that finds a business tier at $11, or a deal that puts the consumer price at $13.99, will stop ordering from you and buy from Amazon, or stop stocking you entirely. Either way, you have lost a retail account to your own listing.
So the deepest tier stays above wholesale by a margin large enough to survive a coupon stacking on top. And when a promotion is planned, check what it does to the effective business price for the duration.
The reverse also holds. If a store or distributor asks why they should buy from you at $12 when "it's cheaper on Amazon", the answer is that it is not, at any quantity, and you can show them the ladder.
Mistakes that show up in the order report
No business price at all. The most common. Business buyers see the consumer price and buy one unit or none. Enrolling and setting a business price two dollars under retail is the smallest change with the largest effect on bulk orders, described in Amazon Business bulk orders.
Tiers that do not match cases. A tier at 25 units when the case holds 12 means a buyer ordering 25 gets two cases and one loose unit. Use 12, 24, 48, 96, or whatever your case pack multiplies to.
A business price above the consumer price. It happens when the consumer price is dropped for a deal and the business price is not touched. Business buyers see it and assume the seller is careless.
Business pricing treated as the wholesale program. A brand that tells inquiring stores to "just order on Amazon Business" has told them it does not sell wholesale. Stores want a price sheet, a case and an invoice from the brand. Business pricing is for buyers who use the product; wholesale is for buyers who resell it. Both can exist on the same ASIN, at different prices, for different customers. A store that emails asking to stock you is a wholesale inquiry, not a business-price customer.
Stock that cannot cover a tier. A tier at 96 units on an ASIN with 80 units in FBA is a tier that will produce a backorder. Business-priced ASINs need more cover than the rest of the catalog.
Reviewing it once a quarter
Business pricing is not a set-and-forget field. Once a quarter, pull the order report filtered to business orders, sort by quantity, and look at three things. Which ASINs are getting multi-unit business orders at the consumer price (they need a business price). Which tiers are being hit and which are never used (the unused ones can go). And whether any deal or repricer moved a tier under the wholesale line at any point in the quarter.
Then look at who is ordering. A quarterly bulk buyer is a customer with a cycle, and the same kinds of organization exist by the thousand beyond the ones who found you on Amazon. Pasting the listing into WholesalePilot shows who would stock or buy the product, which is the fast way to see that wider list.
The business price is one rung on a ladder that runs from a single Prime order down to a distributor's pallet. Set the whole ladder, and each rung stops competing with the others.