Amazon Price and BuyBox Tracker

Our client is a company selling products on Amazon. Since the products are not unique, competitors frequently appeared on the Amazon listing page with better prices, taking over the Buy Box (a section on the Amazon page where there is a direct purchase button; statistically, 80% of sales are made through the Buy Box).

Often, the client's employees would only realize the presence of a competitor with better prices and the loss of the Buy Box with a delay (only after noticing a drop in sales). This created the need for an automated process.

The task was divided into the following parts:

1. Buy Box Monitoring: If any other company takes over the Buy Box, a notification should be sent.
2. Competitor Quantity and Price Monitoring: If a new competitor appears in the list of sellers or a competitor sets a price lower than the company's product, a notification should be sent.
3. Product Status Monitoring: If a product is blocked or sales are halted, this should also be immediately known, and a notification should be sent.

Telegram was chosen as the notification mechanism. It was decided to develop a Telegram bot that would report all events and send messages to a group where the company's employees could quickly respond.

Additionally, dynamic adjustment of the list of tracked products was one of the requirements.

After testing and research, Keepa service was chosen for monitoring the Buy Box and competitors. Keepa continuously scans Amazon and provides a convenient API at a reasonable cost. The minimum subscription allowed monitoring the necessary parameters for 150 products every hour.

For easy management of the product list (ASINs), Google Spreadsheets was chosen. The script automatically downloads the product list from the document before execution, allowing the client’s employees to dynamically change the list of products to be monitored at any time.

All logic was implemented using Python in the form of an Airflow DAG, installed on our server. We extensively use Airflow, an open-source workflow management platform that allows the implementation of complex and reliable data processing configurations and, importantly, continuous maintenance.

The Telegram bot, which sends messages, was developed by us and maintains a high level of privacy, with no access to our clients' private data (messages, files). It can be added to any internal company Telegram chat and is only capable of sending notifications.

All goals were met, and a reliable service was developed that efficiently (every hour) monitors anomalies related to prices and the presence of competitors in Amazon listings, sending notifications via Telegram.