Competitive Scraping, Amazon.com

Executive Summary

I currently work for Overstock.com, a major internet retailer. Our main competitor is Amazon.com, and we have many different methods of trying to keep current on Amazon.com's prices. Our philosophy at Overstock.com is that we want to be know as the internet's low price leader. As such, when aware that we are selling the same product at a higher price than Amazon.com, we lower the price or drop the product. That way consumers can have confidence that when they have found what they want on our website, that we will have lowest price. We currently have a team of 5 full-time employees whose sole job function is keep our database of Amazon.com information current. When I asked my boss for ideas about this project, he said it would be really useful if I could write a macro where we could feed it Amazon Stock Identification Numbers (ASINs) and it would bring back the name, current pricing, current shipping, and total current cost for that item. As requested, I did just that. Both my direct boss and his boss have tested this macro, and found it to exceed their expectations. We are excited to implement it as a tool that will save Overstock.com both time and money.

http://files.gove.net/shares/files/10f/cmarsh/VBA_write_up.pdf

http://files.gove.net/shares/files/10f/cmarsh/ASINmacro.xlsm