A practical guide for K-brands in the US: surviving the Amazon Buy Box. Pre-register now

If your K-brand has entered the US market, you’re probably working on branding, marketing and sales strategy across online platforms all at once. But getting your products seen across many channels while running operations efficiently is far more complicated than it looks. Competition keeps intensifying and consumer behavior changes fast, so simply listing your products isn’t enough.

The channel you can’t afford to overlook is Amazon. Amazon is more than an online marketplace: it’s the most powerful direct connection to US consumers and an essential channel for brand growth. Amazon has more than 230 million monthly active users and more than 180 million Prime members, with 57% of sales on mobile. Beyond being a place to sell products, Amazon is the biggest opportunity for K-brands to secure steady revenue and real brand awareness.

Amazon’s Buy Box: the key to brand revenue

In MarqVision’s survey of global brand practitioners, 58.7% of respondents said Amazon is a core channel. That’s more than double the second-place platform, eBay (24%). Amazon’s share of brand revenue is that dominant, and at the center of it sits the Buy Box.

On Amazon, multiple sellers can sell the same product, and the algorithm weighs price, shipping terms, seller rating and other factors to pick the most competitive seller as the “default purchase option.” Shoppers click this default option without much thought, so products from the seller who wins the Buy Box convert at far higher rates. Even when everyone sells the same product, whether you hold the Buy Box is the deciding factor in your sales results.

Even so, 41% of global brand managers didn’t know whether their products were losing the Buy Box. That means many brands are absorbing lost revenue without realizing it.

The real impact of losing the Amazon Buy Box

The moment you lose the Buy Box, your product’s visibility drops sharply. Just being pushed off the first page of search results quickly lowers conversion, which means lower sales and fewer new customers. Since most shoppers decide on the first page, this small change can do serious long-term harm to brand growth.

Yet according to MarqVision’s US Gray Market Report, many brands still don’t have a clear view of their Buy Box status. One in five brand managers said the Buy Box was hard to win back or that they couldn’t even tell whether they had, and more than half of brands said Buy Box losses affect up to 50% of their total Amazon revenue.

The problem is even more serious when a gray-market seller holds the Buy Box. Product detail pages can be edited without permission and the brand’s image distorted. Incorrect product information, poor customer service and counterfeit sales erode consumer trust, and shoppers who can’t tell official sellers from unauthorized ones end up distrusting the brand itself. Without systematic Buy Box management, it’s not just revenue at risk but brand trust, customer experience and long-term business growth.

Tackling US gray-market sales, starting with data

So how should K-brands respond to unauthorized sales and Buy Box losses on Amazon?

MarqVision surveyed global brand managers and analyzed in depth the state of unauthorized sales in the US, the scale of revenue loss, and the limits and difficulties brands face in responding. In the report, “A practical guide for K-brands in the US: surviving the Amazon Buy Box,” you’ll find:

• The damage unauthorized sales are doing to brands in the US
• The real impact of Buy Box losses on revenue
• The main difficulties brands face in detecting and acting on unauthorized sales

As K-brands grow more popular, unauthorized sales and black-market resellers are increasing fast too. Built on practitioners’ experience and data, this report offers realistic insights every K-brand needs as it enters the US market.

Pre-register for the report now and be the first to get it.