An Amazon Promotion Can Create a Walmart Problem
Running a deal on Amazon sounds like an Amazon decision.
For brands selling on both Amazon and Walmart, it isn’t.
Walmart monitors prices for the same products on competing websites. If Walmart determines that your Walmart offer is priced egregiously higher than the same item currently or recently offered elsewhere, Walmart can automatically unpublish the offer under its Pricing Rule.
This creates an easily overlooked problem.
Imagine your normal pricing is:
Amazon: $29.99
Walmart: $29.99
Everything is aligned.
Then your Amazon team schedules a deal:
Amazon Deal: $22.99
Walmart: $29.99
Now the external market price has changed, but Walmart hasn’t.
Depending on the size of the discrepancy and Walmart’s pricing evaluation, your Walmart offer can lose competitiveness, become ineligible for the Buy Box, or—in more serious cases—be unpublished for Reasonable Price Not Satisfied.
That can turn a successful Amazon promotion into a Walmart sales problem.
The Difference Between an Amazon Deal and a Coupon Matters
This is where sellers need to understand how the promotion is being structured.
An Amazon coupon generally does not change the displayed selling price of the product itself. Amazon confirms that coupons are separate discounts customers clip and apply, rather than changes to the detail-page price.
That distinction matters when Walmart is evaluating publicly available external prices.
If the product remains visibly priced at $29.99 on Amazon with a coupon available, that is different from Amazon actually displaying the item at a $22.99 deal price.
This is why brands should not treat:
Coupon
and
Deal Price
as interchangeable when planning cross-marketplace promotions.
From a Walmart pricing perspective, they can create very different situations.
Walmart Isn’t Only Looking at Your Walmart Competitors
This is what many sellers miss.
Walmart’s pricing system doesn’t only ask:
“What are other Walmart sellers charging?”
Walmart’s Pricing Rule specifically states that it can evaluate prices currently or recently offered on competing websites. Walmart’s reference price can also incorporate competitor website pricing, historical selling price, Buy Box price, average offer price, and Walmart’s own online and store pricing.
So your Amazon pricing team can unintentionally affect your Walmart business.
This becomes especially important during:
- Prime Day
- Black Friday
- Cyber Monday
- Holiday promotions
- Lightning Deals
- Best Deals
- Brand-specific sales
- Temporary price reductions
- Major seasonal events
If Amazon drops and Walmart doesn’t, someone needs to be watching Walmart.
The Problem Can Go Beyond Suppression
Not every pricing discrepancy results in Walmart completely unpublishing the listing.
There can be an earlier problem:
Buy Box eligibility.
Walmart states that when an offer is substantially higher than prices currently or recently offered on Walmart or competing sites—but not high enough to require unpublishing—it may remove the Add to Cart button and offer details from the primary item page.
The customer can still potentially purchase through More Seller Options, but the offer has lost its normal Buy Box position.
For a high-volume item, that can be extremely damaging.
And if you’re running Walmart PPC against that product at the same time, you now have an even bigger problem.
The marketing team may continue optimizing bids and budgets while the underlying issue is actually cross-channel pricing.
This Is Why Amazon and Walmart Promotions Need to Be Planned Together
For multichannel brands, promotions should no longer be scheduled platform by platform.
Before an Amazon deal goes live, the team should ask:
What will this do to Walmart?
If Amazon is dropping an item from $29.99 to $22.99 for five days, determine in advance whether Walmart should run a corresponding promotion.
Walmart has its own Promotional Pricing tools in Seller Center, allowing sellers to schedule promotional pricing ahead of time.
That means the Walmart promotion can be prepared before the Amazon event starts rather than discovering the pricing problem after Walmart sales disappear.
The goal is synchronization:
Amazon promotion starts → Walmart promotion starts
Amazon promotion ends → Walmart pricing returns appropriately
This needs to be planned, not handled reactively.
Don’t Automatically Match Every Amazon Promotion
There is another side to this.
Cross-channel coordination does not mean Walmart should blindly copy every Amazon promotion.
First determine:
- Is it exactly the same UPC?
- Is the pack quantity identical?
- Is it the same size?
- Is it the same variation?
- Is Amazon showing an actual lower selling price or only a coupon?
- Is the external offer currently available?
- Can Walmart support the same promotion profitably?
This is especially important because, as we discussed in our previous MaxifyPPC analysis, Walmart can sometimes associate an item with an incorrect external product.
If Walmart is comparing your 12-pack against an Amazon 6-pack, lowering Walmart’s price isn’t necessarily the right solution.
Verify the external match before reacting to the price.
Watch the Walmart Item After the Deal Starts
Even when everything has been prepared correctly, someone should monitor Walmart after the external promotion goes live.
Check:
Pricing Insights
Is Walmart showing the expected competitive price?
Buy Box Eligibility
Did anything change?
Unpublished Items
Has the SKU been flagged as Reasonable Price Not Satisfied?
Traffic and Sales
Did performance change immediately after the Amazon promotion started?
External Match
Is Walmart comparing the correct product?
Walmart’s Pricing Insights dashboard shows sellers the current price, suggested price, competitive pricing information, Buy Box eligibility, traffic, and publishing status.
This makes it possible to identify a pricing problem before several days of sales are lost.
What Happens When the Amazon Deal Ends?
This is another detail that can get overlooked.
When Amazon’s deal ends, Walmart’s promotional strategy needs to be reviewed as well.
You don’t want to solve one pricing problem by unnecessarily leaving Walmart discounted for another week.
Cross-marketplace promotional planning needs both:
A start plan and an exit plan.
Walmart says that when external market pricing changes and an unpublished item once again complies with its Pricing Rule, Walmart will automatically republish the offer, typically within 48 hours.
But waiting for an item to be suppressed and then waiting for Walmart to recognize the corrected pricing is not a good promotional strategy.
The better approach is preventing the problem in the first place.
The MaxifyPPC Cross-Marketplace Promotion Checklist
Before any major Amazon promotion, we recommend reviewing five things:
1. Identify every SKU entering the Amazon promotion.
2. Separate coupons from actual selling-price reductions. They do not necessarily create the same external pricing situation.
3. Check the corresponding Walmart SKU and confirm Walmart has matched it to the correct external product.
4. Determine whether Walmart needs a parallel promotion and schedule it before the Amazon price changes.
5. Monitor Walmart Pricing Insights, Buy Box eligibility, publishing status, and sales once the promotion begins.
This should be part of the promotion setup—not something discovered after Walmart revenue drops.
Final Thoughts
For a multichannel brand, an Amazon deal is no longer just an Amazon decision.
Amazon pricing can have consequences on Walmart.
Walmart explicitly monitors competing websites as part of its Pricing Rule. If your Amazon selling price drops substantially while Walmart remains at the regular price, your Walmart offer can lose Buy Box eligibility or, in more severe situations, become unpublished.
Coupons need to be evaluated differently because they don’t necessarily change Amazon’s displayed item price.
The takeaway is simple:
Before scheduling an Amazon deal, check Walmart.
Make sure the products are correctly matched. Understand whether the promotion changes the visible external price. Decide whether Walmart needs a parallel promotion. Schedule both sides correctly. And monitor the Walmart SKU once the deal begins.
A strong Amazon promotion shouldn’t come at the expense of your Walmart business.
Running Promotions Across Amazon and Walmart?
MaxifyPPC helps brands coordinate Walmart pricing, promotions, external price matching, Buy Box health, and advertising so growth on one marketplace doesn’t unintentionally hurt another.
