Items For Sale - Amazon Product Advertising API Developer's Manual

Product Advertising API Developer Guide
• Canada—www.amazon.ca
• China—www.amazon.cn
• Germany—www.amazon.de
• France—www.amazon.fr
• Italy—www.amazon.it
• Japan—www.amazon.co.jp
• Spain—www.amazon.es
• UK—www.amazon.co.uk
• US—www.amazon.com

Items for Sale

www.amazon.com lists hundreds of thousands of items for sale. Most of these items are warehoused
and sold by Amazon or other large merchants, such as Nordstrom. All of these items are part of the
Amazon marketplace.
In addition to large merchants selling items, individuals and companies also sell items that can be found
using www.amazon.com. Some of these sellers have their own storefront on Amazon and their items can
only be found in their store. Most sellers, however, list their items in the Amazon marketplace as well as
in their stores.
Product Advertising API operations only enable you to retrieve items that are stored by Amazon. Product
Advertising API does not enable you to add items for sale to Amazon. Sellers, such as Amazon Advantage
sellers, who do add items to Amazon's catalog do so under a separate agreement.
Item Identifiers
All items for sale on www.amazon.com have identifiers. There are two major kinds. The first identifies
items regardless of whether or not they can be purchased:
• ASIN—Amazon Standard Item Number
An alphanumeric token that uniquely identifies items in the Amazon marketplace.
All items in the marketplace have an ASIN. This is by far the most common identifier. ASINs are used
by the majority of Product Advertising API operations.
The second identifies items that can actually be purchased:
• OfferListingId—An alphanumeric token that uniquely identifies items in the Amazon marketplace that
can be purchased
All items in the marketplace that can be purchased have an OfferListingId. This is by far the most
common identifier for items that can be purchased.
Other Item Identifiers
Amazon has other item identifiers but these are rarer and they can be used in fewer Product Advertising
API operations:
• UPC—Universal Product Code
A 12-digit item identifier used in the US and CA locales. The UPC is identifier used in barcodes.
• EAN—European Article Number
A 13-digit equivalent of the UPC that is used in Europe for products and barcodes.
Items for Sale
API Version 2011-08-01
24