Who holds the Buy Box, brand by brand
Last updated: 30 September 2026
For every brand at the top of a shelf, yours and your competitors', how much of the time Amazon sold it directly, a third party sold it, or nobody could buy at all.
You know your own status: whether Amazon buys your products and resells them, or whether third parties do. You have no way of knowing that for the brands you compete with. The Market chapter answers it for every brand and every product at the top of the shelves you follow.
Every reading with a known holder falls into exactly one of three states, so the three add up to the whole bar: Amazon was the default seller, a third party was, or there was no Buy Box at all and nobody could buy in one click. Time when nobody can tell who held the Buy Box is not drawn in the bar. It is written next to it, as a share of the observed time, so the bar never mixes two different bases.
Measured in hours, not in readings
Shares are weighted by time. Counting readings instead would weigh a brand whose prices move every day far more heavily than a brand whose listings sit still for weeks, and the two would no longer be comparable. On one category the gap between the two methods reached 32 points, in both directions.
Why the window does not end today
Your own catalogue and the wider shelf are not read at the same pace. If each brand were measured up to its own last reading, the screen would compare different periods and call it a comparison. So the window always covers the last 90 days observed on the shelf, ending at the date by which the whole shelf has been read. The comparison window you pick above the screen moves the ranks only, never these shares.
Zero percent is a finding
A brand showing 0% for Amazon, on many observed hours, is not a gap in the data: it means Amazon never sold that brand directly over the period. That is often the most useful line on the page. A product or brand with no observed hours at all shows Not measured instead, never a zero, and no bar is drawn.
What this is not
This is a share of time, not a share of sales. Two products count one hour each even if one sells a hundred times more. It says who sells this shelf, not how big anyone is on it: no market share and no market value are shown.
This screen names no sellers. Third parties are counted, not identified. Sellers are named in the Sellers chapter, and only on your own products.