Listings
What is ASIN?
Amazon Standard Identification Number
The ten-character code Amazon assigns to every product in its catalog. It is how a listing is identified, tracked, and analyzed across the marketplace.
Why it matters in practice
The ASIN belongs to the catalog page, not to you. That one fact explains most of what confuses sellers about it. Several sellers can offer the same ASIN, so it is the page that competes rather than your particular offer, and changes made to that page by anyone with rights to it affect everyone selling on it. It is also the join key for almost every piece of Amazon reporting, which is why a brand that cannot say which ASIN maps to which internal SKU cannot reconcile its own numbers. Keep in mind an ASIN and a SKU answer different questions: the ASIN says what the shopper is looking at, the SKU says what you actually hold and what it cost you. Confusing the two is how a product with several variations quietly reports as one thing.
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