Amazon’s third-party marketplace is a powerhouse within the e-commerce world. Independent sellers such as solo entrepreneurs and large global brands now account for the majority of Amazon’s sales. In fact, more than 60% of all items sold on Amazon come from third-party sellers (3P), not Amazon’s own retail (1P).
As of 2024, there were roughly 9.7 million seller accounts on Amazon’s marketplaces worldwide, though only about 17% are actively selling at any given time. With 3,700 new sellers joining Amazon every day, the competition is intense.
This guide is intended for Amazon professionals, investors, and sellers who aim to use data-driven insights to maintain a competitive edge. It covers the valuable information Amazon seller data can uncover, including sales metrics, market share, buy box performance, and seller demographics, along with how tools like SmartScout help make these insights easy to access.
Amazon’s Third-Party Marketplace: The Engine of Amazon’s Growth
Third-party sellers have become the driving force behind Amazon’s growth. Unlike first-party vendors who sell inventory to Amazon, third-party sellers list products on the marketplace and sell directly to customers. Their share of total units sold has steadily increased over the past decade, reaching 62 percent by early 2025. This shift highlights the importance of seller data, as independent sellers now account for the majority of Amazon’s sales.
In 2024, U.S.-based third-party sellers averaged over $290,000 in annual sales, with more than 55,000 surpassing $1 million. While many accounts remain inactive or generate minimal sales, the potential is significant. Tools like Seller Central and Fulfillment by Amazon have lowered entry barriers and fueled this growth, creating a competitive environment where data is essential.
Why Seller Data and Competitive Analysis Matter
If you are serious about succeeding on Amazon, whether as a brand owner, agency, or investor evaluating an Amazon business, competitive analysis using seller data is essential. Amazon’s marketplace is vast and often difficult to interpret. With millions of sellers and products, it is not immediately clear who is winning or why unless you examine the data closely. That is why analyzing Amazon seller data is so important.
- Identify Market Leaders and Competition: Seller data identifies top performers in any category. If you sell Kitchen Appliances, it shows which sellers lead and how much revenue they earn. It also reveals the dominant seller for a brand or product line such as the one with the largest share of sales. These insights are key for benchmarking, finding partners, or spotting acquisition opportunities.
- Understand Sales Distribution (1P vs 3P): Competitive data helps distinguish between sales made by Amazon and those made by third-party sellers, offering key insights for brand owners. Tools like SmartScout can break down a brand’s revenue into 1P and 3P sales, revealing whether a brand sells wholesale to Amazon or relies on independent sellers. For instance, Ninja sells mostly through Amazon directly, while The North Face depends heavily on resellers. These insights are crucial for understanding a brand’s distribution strategy and market position.
- Gauge Market Share and Opportunity: Seller data shows how market share is distributed. For investors, knowing a business holds 5% of sales compared to a competitor’s 15% can shape valuation and strategy. For sellers, seeing top competitors cover only half the market may suggest opportunity, while one seller with 80% share signals strong competition. Competitive analysis tools can estimate these shares using seller revenue and category rankings.
- Uncover Growth Trends and Seasonality: Historical seller data allows you to see how a seller’s performance changes over time. Is a competitor’s sales trending up or down? Did a brand’s third-party sales spike after a policy change? Historic seller data (available through tools like SmartScout’s Scope and Seller history features) lets you analyze trends, seasonality, and the impact of events. This is crucial for strategic planning – e.g. anticipating when a rival might run low on stock or when seasonal demand peaks.
- Optimize Buy Box Strategy: One of Amazon’s most important competitive features is the Buy Box, where the “Add to Cart” button appears. Winning it means your offer is the one most customers will buy. When multiple sellers list the same product, the Buy Box rotates based on factors like price, shipping, and seller performance. Tracking Buy Box win rates reveals which seller captures most sales. Tools like SmartScout show who wins the Buy Box and how often, both at the product and brand level. This helps sellers improve pricing or fulfillment and allows brands to spot unauthorized sellers taking sales.
- Reveal Geographic Insights: Amazon’s global reach makes seller location a key strategic factor. Knowing whether competitors are overseas or domestic can influence how you respond to their tactics and timing. Seller data often includes location details, down to the city level. In recent years, China-based sellers have surged, with more than half of the top 20 Amazon seller cities now in China. Shenzhen alone hosts over 102,000 sellers, far outpacing any other city. While U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles remain important, they now trail behind Chinese hubs like Guangzhou and Dongguan. These patterns matter, as many Chinese sellers have direct factory access and can offer highly competitive pricing.
- Private Label vs. Resellers: A seller’s business model is a valuable data point. Some are private label brand owners selling their own products, while others are resellers offering many brands through price arbitrage or wholesale. You can often tell the difference by the number of brands they carry—one or two suggests a brand owner, while dozens point to a reseller. This distinction helps shape your strategy. Competing with brand owners may require product differentiation, while resellers often compete on price or distribution. Tools like SmartScout can tag sellers by type and filter them based on brand count, making it easier to segment and analyze.
In short, seller data provides visibility into an otherwise murky marketplace. Instead of guessing who your competition is, how big they are, or why they’re outselling you, data equips you with answers. Next, we’ll go into some of the specific metrics and features that an Amazon seller data platform (like SmartScout) offers to facilitate this analysis.
Key Data Points for Amazon Seller Competitive Analysis
To conduct a thorough competitive analysis on Amazon, you should pay attention to several key data points and metrics. Below, we outline the most important ones and how they contribute to understanding the competitive landscape:
- Seller Revenue Estimates: Understanding seller revenue is key to assessing market position. Revenue estimates help rank competitors by size—for instance, if one seller earns $500,000 a month and another earns $100,000, you know who leads. These figures can be broken down by marketplace and category. Some tools also show historical revenue trends, revealing growth or decline over time. This data forms the foundation for calculating market share and identifying each player’s portion of the category.
- 1P vs 3P Split: Understanding whether a brand sells through Amazon retail or third-party sellers is crucial for brand analysis. Tools such as SmartScout can show if sales come from Amazon directly or from independent sellers. A strong 1P presence often means Amazon has buying agreements with the brand, offering tighter control but possibly lower margins. A strong 3P presence suggests an open market with resellers, which may lead to more competition and pricing pressure. If a brand is fully 1P, resellers will struggle to compete. If it’s fully 3P with many sellers, there may be room to grow—or it could signal a lack of control. SmartScout helps identify these patterns by showing whether sales are concentrated or spread across sellers.
- Buy Box Win Rate: We touched on this, but to emphasize – Buy Box percentage is a critical metric for any product that has multiple sellers. It essentially measures a seller’s competitive position on a listing. If you’re analyzing a particular competitor, checking their buy box win rate across many ASINs can reveal strengths or weaknesses. For instance, if a seller only wins the buy box 10% of the time on a top-selling product, they’re likely losing sales to someone else 90% of the time – perhaps due to higher price or slower shipping. On the other hand, a seller consistently winning the buy box indicates they likely have the best price+shipping combo or an exclusive deal. At a brand level, SmartScout can even show the overall buy box ownership for each seller on a brand’s catalog – essentially exposing who the primary retail partner or reseller for that brand is. This metric is unique and incredibly actionable: sellers can adjust tactics to improve their share, and brands can identify who is effectively “representing” them on Amazon.
- Number of Sellers (Competition Intensity): This metric shows how many sellers compete on a listing or within a category. A product with one seller is a monopoly, while one with many sellers is highly competitive. Categories with thousands of sellers may be fragmented, while niches with only a few can be tightly controlled. SmartScout’s database tracks millions of sellers and can filter by niche to reveal how crowded the space is. It also highlights top performers, such as those earning over $100K or $1M per month. Knowing how many serious competitors exist helps shape your strategy, whether the market favors dominant players or allows room for many to succeed.
- Seller Location and Origin: Seller geography is a key data point. Tools that show seller locations by country or city help you filter competitors by region. If you focus on the US market, you may want to analyze other US-based sellers or track overseas competition. SmartScout’s Seller Map plots global seller activity, revealing hotspots. For example, if most top sellers in your category are based in China, you might differentiate by emphasizing quality or faster local shipping. Investors may also spot opportunities if a brand’s main competitors are overseas, suggesting room for a domestic brand to stand out.
- Category & Subcategory Dominance: Another way to analyze competition is by identifying which sellers dominate specific categories or subcategories. Amazon’s category structure allows certain sellers to hold a large share in niche areas. For example, one brand might lead the Wireless Earbuds subcategory due to its popularity. Tools like SmartScout let you break down data by category to see which sellers and brands are leading. This helps agencies and sellers spot opportunities, such as a subcategory with no dominant player or one controlled by a single brand. SmartScout also offers a Brand Score that measures content quality and optimization, which can reveal if a top brand is vulnerable to better-executed competitors.
- Seller Business Model & Fulfillment: Competitive data shows how a seller operates, including whether they use Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) or fulfill orders themselves (FBM), and whether they sell many brands or just one. This helps segment competitors. FBA sellers often benefit from Prime shipping, while FBM sellers may handle unique or bulky products. For agencies or B2B providers, these details highlight sellers who might need support—such as FBM sellers who could grow by switching to FBA. Understanding a seller’s model also reveals strengths and weaknesses. Resellers may offer wide selection but face thin margins, while private label sellers may have strong branding but limited variety.
By analyzing these data points in concert, you can build a comprehensive picture of the Amazon competitive environment for your category or investment. However, to gather and make sense of all this information, you’ll likely need specialized software.
How SmartScout Unlocks Amazon Seller Insights
Collecting Amazon seller data manually is virtually impossible given the scale and constant change on the platform.
This is where tools like SmartScout come into play. SmartScout is widely regarded as one of the most authoritative sources for Amazon third-party seller data, offering a suite of features tailored for deep-dive competitive analysis. Unlike many traditional Amazon tools that focus on product research or keywords, SmartScout is uniquely focused on seller-centric data – making it a go-to platform for understanding the seller landscape.
Here are some of the standout ways SmartScout empowers Amazon professionals with data:
- Comprehensive Seller Database: SmartScout’s Seller Tool monitors over 2 million Amazon sellers across global marketplaces. The database goes beyond names, offering details like estimated revenue, brand count, top categories, and location. For instance, you might find a seller earning $5 million annually in the Toys category, selling three brands via FBA from the U.S. This depth of data allows you to analyze sellers of all sizes, from major players to niche newcomers.
- Powerful Filtering and Search: With so many sellers on Amazon, SmartScout offers advanced filters to pinpoint exactly who you want to analyze. You can sort by category, revenue, location, fulfillment type (FBA/FBM), brand count, and more. For example, an agency can find UK sellers making over $100K per month in Sports, while an investor can target private label brands in the US with over $1M in revenue and recent growth. This approach is far more efficient than manually browsing the marketplace, delivering focused results in seconds.
- Revenue and Growth Metrics: SmartScout includes estimated revenue and growth trends for each seller. Its Scope feature shows historical revenue data, helping you track whether sales are rising, seasonal, or declining. This reveals who may be gaining market share. Brand-level historic sales also show how strategies like shifting between 1P and 3P or adding resellers have affected performance over time.
- Buy Box and Dominant Seller Data: SmartScout tracks Buy Box winners across products using features like the Buy Box Map, showing which sellers win and how often. Its Dominant Seller indicator identifies the top seller for each brand, whether it's the brand itself or a third party. With filterable data, users can spot brands dependent on one reseller or sellers dominating multiple brands. For instance, you might find a distributor that leads sales for dozens of mid-size brands, signaling major influence in that category. These insights go beyond what Amazon’s site reveals.
- Geographic Seller Map: SmartScout’s Seller Map visually plots seller locations worldwide, helping identify competitive clusters. You can zoom into regions like Shenzhen to see seller density or explore top U.S. states. This data supports analysis, such as confirming where electronics sellers are concentrated. It’s also valuable for regional strategy, like assessing local versus cross-border seller presence when expanding to Amazon Europe.
- Data Export and Integration: SmartScout lets users export seller data for deeper analysis outside the app. You can filter sellers by key metrics and export to CSV for use in Excel or a CRM. This is especially helpful for agencies generating leads or investors building target lists. Exported data often includes seller name, revenue, location, and contact info. With a list of top sellers, you can easily analyze or reach out. This flexibility sets SmartScout apart from tools that restrict data access.
- Additional Niche Features: SmartScout offers features that enhance seller analysis. Ad Spy shows which products a brand or seller advertises, helping assess marketing intensity. Keyword Scout reveals which search terms a seller’s products dominate. The Brands database profiles every Amazon brand with filters, such as revenue over $10M. The Category & Subcategory explorer shows niche sizes and leading sellers or brands. Together, these tools provide a full view of Amazon’s marketplace, from broad trends to detailed seller insights.
It’s worth noting that while SmartScout provides the data, it’s up to your strategy to act on it. The tool can highlight, for example, that Brand X’s top seller is an unauthorized 3P merchant, that Competitor Y’s growth has stalled this quarter, or that Chinese sellers have flooded into your category in the last year – but you need to use those insights to make decisions (such as tightening your distribution, stepping up marketing, or differentiating your product).
In summary, SmartScout serves as a one-stop research hub for Amazon seller data, making previously hidden information accessible and even easy to visualize. It embodies the idea that data is power in the Amazon marketplace. Sellers who leverage these insights can outmaneuver those who go in blind. Investors and agencies who do their homework with such data can find the gems and avoid the bad bets.
Case Study: Using Data to Inform Strategy
To illustrate the impact of leveraging Amazon seller data, let’s walk through a brief hypothetical scenario. Suppose you are an investor looking at acquiring a brand that sells pet supplies on Amazon, and you want to understand its competitive position:
- Market Share Check: Using SmartScout, you filter the Pets Supplies category for sellers in the U.S. doing at least $50k/month in revenue. You find 200+ sellers meeting the criteria. The target brand’s Amazon seller account is doing ~$200k/month. By sorting the list, you see that puts them roughly in the top 30 sellers in Pet Supplies on Amazon US. The top seller in the category is doing $1M/month. This tells you the brand is significant but not dominant – useful for valuation and identifying upside (there’s room to grow to reach #1).
- Dominant Seller & Distribution: Next, you look at the brand’s profile on SmartScout. It shows that the brand’s sales are 100% 3P – interestingly, Amazon Retail (1P) doesn’t sell their products at all. The “Dominant Seller” for the brand is actually the brand’s own seller account (they sell themselves), taking 90% of the buy box, with a small reseller picking up the remaining 10%. This is a good sign – it means the brand has tight control over distribution on Amazon (no rampant resellers undercutting prices). It also hints that if you buy this brand, you won’t immediately have Amazon as a competitor selling your product (no 1P vendor relationship exists).
- Competitive Landscape: Using the data, you identify the top 5 competing brands in Pet Supplies and examine their sellers. You notice 2 of those brands sell 1P (through Vendor Central) and thus Amazon is their primary seller. The other 3 are like your target – they sell 3P and control their Amazon presence. One competitor has multiple resellers though, and SmartScout shows their Buy Box is split among several sellers, meaning their brand might be losing margin to arbitrage sellers. This intel could be leveraged post-acquisition (a chance to be more aggressive and capture market share from that competitor by staying in stock and pricing keenly, for instance).
- International Opportunity: You use SmartScout’s marketplace filter to see the brand’s presence in Europe. It appears the brand isn’t selling in the Amazon UK, DE, or JP markets at all (no sellers associated with the brand there). However, SmartScout’s category data shows that the Pet Supplies market in Europe is large and growing. A quick look at top sellers in Europe shows a lot of domestic players and some Chinese sellers, but your brand’s niche doesn’t have a dominant global brand. This identifies a growth opportunity: expand the brand to international Amazon marketplaces, where competition might be softer for that specific product type.
- Trend Analysis: Finally, you check the historical sales trend for the brand and its key competitors. The brand’s sales show steady 15% year-over-year growth on Amazon (solid, if not explosive). One competitor shows a plateau in the last year, possibly due to running into inventory issues or market saturation. Another competitor shows a spike during the past holiday season (maybe they launched a new hit product). These insights help you forecast what growth might look like and where seasonal peaks are. It also alerts you to ask the brand owner about any seasonality or past stockouts, given the patterns seen.
This kind of deep-dive would be extraordinarily difficult without a tool to aggregate the data. With the right data in hand, you as the investor can proceed with much greater confidence, having a full picture of the Amazon playing field for that brand.
For a seller or brand owner, a similar approach can be used to refine strategy – e.g., identifying which competitor’s weaknesses to target, which keywords to bid on (if a competitor is out-of-stock or losing buy box, capitalize on their lapse), or even which resellers to consider partnering with or supplanting. An agency could use the data to find high-potential clients (sellers with strong sales but poor content, indicating they could use optimization services, for instance). The scenarios are endless, but they all rely on one thing: reliable seller data.
Key Takeaways
- Third-party sellers drive Amazon’s marketplace, accounting for about 60% of all sales on Amazon. Any Amazon competitive strategy must center on understanding these sellers and their data.
- Seller data unlocks insights into competition that you can’t get just by browsing Amazon. Metrics like revenue estimates, market share, buy box win rates, and dominant seller identification reveal who is winning and why in each category.
- Global perspective is crucial: Amazon has millions of sellers worldwide, with China now a major force (e.g. Shenzhen alone hosts over 100k sellers). Analyzing seller data can highlight geographic trends and international opportunities.
- SmartScout is a leading tool for Amazon seller analysis, providing an authoritative database of over 2 million sellers with granular details. It excels at distinguishing 1P vs 3P sales, tracking buy box winners, and mapping out the competitive landscape at both brand and category levels.
- Data-driven decisions outperform guesswork on Amazon. Whether you’re a seller optimizing your strategy, an investor evaluating an acquisition, or an agency seeking clients, leveraging comprehensive Amazon seller data will give you a competitive edge and deeper understanding of the market.
By embracing the wealth of information available – and using platforms like SmartScout to gather and interpret it – Amazon professionals can navigate the marketplace with insight and confidence. In the fast-paced world of Amazon, knowledge truly is power, and the sellers armed with data are the ones most likely to succeed.
