Deals, vouchers and coupons: what does a promotion actually buy?

Amazon’s promotional toolkit trades margin for visibility: Lightning and Best Deals put you on the deals pages shoppers browse deliberately, vouchers pin a green badge to your search result, and Prime-exclusive discounts sharpen conversion during events. Each carries fees or funded discount, and event slots are rationed.

The strategic uses are specific: velocity to launch a product or reclaim rank, trial to feed Subscribe & Save subscriptions, and controlled clearance of short-dated stock before Amazon’s expiry rules remove it anyway. A promotion should end with something you keep: rank, subscribers or reviews.

The guardrails matter as much as the mechanics: protect your reference price architecture, and check stacking before launch, because a voucher combining with an unnoticed discount has embarrassed more than one brand.