Managing Large Amazon Catalogues: How Complexity Undermines Performance

Large product catalogues can certainly drive significant sales. However, without the right structure and clear governance, they frequently create operational and commercial risks. The challenge for established brands extends beyond simply listing products. The real question lies in managing thousands of SKUs in a manner that effectively safeguards both profitability and brand equity.

Catalogue Governance

Large product catalogues often contain issues such as duplicate or orphan ASINs, fragmented variation structures, and incomplete product attributes. In turn, Amazon’s COSMO algorithm splits reviews, dilutes traffic, and reduces discoverability due to these problems. Therefore, as multiple contributors may be editing content, maintaining catalogue governance is essential to ensure accuracy and sustained ranking.

Buy Box And Reseller Dynamics

Buy Box control presents a frequent challenge for brands. For example, competing resellers often cause inconsistent pricing, which in turn erodes margins. Moreover, they may create variable delivery promises that ultimately undermine the customer experience. Furthermore, price suppression adds complexity when Amazon detects lower prices across the market. Irrespective of whether a brand trades directly with Amazon or through a third-party account, maintaining consistency is essential for keeping Buy Box share.

Advertising At Scale

Managing advertising across extensive product ranges introduces significant complexity. Often, budgets are spread too thinly, which inevitably leaves campaigns underfunded. In addition, without a structured approach to identifying new keywords, refining negative keywords, and implementing a disciplined placement strategy, inefficiencies tend to grow. As the cost-per-click (CPC) rises, aligning Total Advertising Cost of Sales (TACoS) becomes increasingly difficult unless spending is directly linked to the contribution margin of products.

Data And Reporting

Search Query Performance, Brand Analytics, and Amazon Marketing Stream offer valuable insights. However, these tools all require sufficient timeframes to be effective. Optimising too quickly, before the attribution cycles close, often results in wasted spend and misleading conclusions. Established brands should review their strategy using meaningful data and refrain from relying on short-term fluctuations.

Inventory And Profitability

Inventory planning must align with advertising demand. Businesses with large catalogues often face FBA capacity limits, IPI constraints, and challenges with replenishment. Furthermore, on Vendor Central, chargebacks and shortages reduce net PPM. Therefore, in both operating models, analysing the contribution margin (by factoring in fees, advertising, and returns) is essential for achieving profitable growth.

From Insight To Action

Accounts are often inherited where complexity in the product catalogue, activity from resellers, and inefficient advertising are undermining results. Therefore, the approach is to establish control through disciplined governance, Buy Box management, and data-driven advertising. By connecting search query performance (SQP), brand analytics, and retail data with profitability models, the strategy ensures that the size of the product catalogue drives growth in an organised manner.

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