Overview

Amazon has upgraded the Product Pricing API (v2022‑05‑01) to include a new field called WasPrice in the getCompetitiveSummary response. WasPrice reports the median price shoppers actually paid for a SKU over the past 90 days, giving sellers a historical price reference that aligns with the “Was” price shown on Amazon detail pages. This addition helps sellers fine‑tune promotions, coupons, and dynamic pricing while protecting margins.

Key Points

• WasPrice field added — Returns the 90‑day median purchase price for the queried ASIN, letting sellers see the price most customers paid rather than only the current list price.
• Placed inside referencePrices array — WasPrice appears alongside CurrentPrice, SuggestedPrice, and other price types, making it easy to retrieve in a single API call.
• Supports promotion planning — Sellers can compare WasPrice to intended discount levels to ensure a deal looks compelling relative to the product’s typical market price.
• Stabilizes pricing analytics — Because the metric is median‑based, short‑term spikes or outliers are smoothed, providing a steadier benchmark for automated repricing engines.
• Backward‑compatible update — No version change is required; existing integrations continue to work and will automatically receive the new field when requested.

How the Updated getCompetitiveSummary Works

1. Request submission — The seller issues a GET /productPricing/v2022-05-01/competitiveSummary request, specifying one or more ASINs and, optionally, a marketplace identifier.

   • Example: A seller queries ASIN B07XYZ1234 on the US marketplace and adds the referencePrices flag to pull all price variants in a single response.

2. Response generation — Amazon’s pricing engine gathers current competitive data and then computes the median of every transaction price recorded for the ASIN during the previous 90 days.