Ecommerce Pricing: How to Set a US Price That Survives Fees, Duties, and Discounts

A price is a claim about the brand. It says who the product is for and what it sits next to. A discount is also a claim. Used as a habit, it says the first price was not real. International brands walk into this twice: once when they convert the home price into dollars without the US costs, and again when a marketplace promotion becomes the only way the advertising report looks acceptable.

Decide the price. Then decide how the choices around it are shown. Do not let a template make either decision for you.

Build the price from the costs you will actually pay

Start with landed cost. That includes the product, freight, and duty. Duty-free treatment for shipments at or under $800 is suspended. Do not leave a zero on the duty line because a 2024 playbook said small parcels were free. The orders and the CBP rule are cited in the market-entry essay. Classify the product. Do not copy a rate from this page. We are not quoting one.

Then add the channel. On Amazon, the public fee page lists two selling plans: Individual at $0.99 per item sold, and Professional at $39.99 per month, plus a referral fee that depends on the category. Fulfillment by Amazon, storage, and aged-inventory charges are separate, and advertising is optional. The page is sell.amazon.com/pricing. For 2026, Amazon told sellers that FBA fees would rise by an average of about $0.08 per unit, that no new FBA fee types were being added, and that increases would not take effect without at least 90 days’ notice. That letter is here. Your SKU is not the average. Run it through Amazon’s Revenue Calculator and your own warehouse invoice.

Walmart charges a referral fee per item and, if you use Walmart Fulfillment Services, a fulfillment charge. Do not use Walmart’s marketing comparison (“about 15 percent less”) as your cost. Get the quote. The onboarding rules are in the cross-channel essay.

A direct store replaces the referral fee with payment processing, your own acquisition cost, and your own returns handling. It does not replace the product, the freight, or the duty.

If the consumer price that survives those costs is far above the prices already on the US shelf, you have a positioning problem or a cost problem. Discounting will not fix either. It will train the customer to wait.

One architecture, three tags

Write three numbers and do not let a channel invent a fourth.

• The price. What a US customer should pay when nothing is on sale.
• The floor. The lowest you will go for a planned reason: a launch, a discontinued scent, a bundle. Below this, you would rather be out of stock.
• The wholesale price. What a retailer pays, set so their shelf price can match the consumer price and still leave them a margin you have actually discussed. There is no universal margin. Use the buyer’s terms. The conflict between these numbers is the wholesale essay.

Put the same consumer price on Amazon, Walmart, and the store. Channel fees come out of your margin, not out of a public markdown. A store coupon that undercuts Amazon by a few dollars is visible, and it makes every later retail conversation harder.

How choices on the page change the price people accept

You do not need a theory of behavior to merchandise a line. You need to stop hiding the comparison you want the customer to make.

Show the line in an order that teaches. A single SKU with no reference point gets compared with whoever else paid for the search. Three sizes, with the middle one as the one you want to sell, give the customer a comparison you designed. Label them in plain language: size, scent, who it is for. Do not label them “best” unless you can say best at what.

Bundles should raise the order, not disguise a discount. A refill paired with the original is a reason to buy more. A bundle that is just 20 percent off the same unit is a sale. Say so, or do not run it.

Shipping is part of the price. On a seller-fulfilled offer, Amazon’s featured-offer logic includes shipping. A low item price plus a high shipping fee is not a clever price. It is a worse delivery promise competing against FBA. Amazon describes those inputs in its Featured Offer article.

Defaults matter. A pre-selected subscription, a pre-ticked protection plan, or a quantity of two when the customer wanted one is a dark pattern, and on Amazon it is also against the spirit of a listing that must show what the customer will receive. If you offer Subscribe & Save, present it as a choice. Do not make the customer reverse it.

Urgency has to be true. “Only three left” is fine when three are left. A countdown that resets is a lie, and it is the kind of claim that makes a premium brand look like a marketplace stall.

Promotions are a calendar, not a reflex

Plan the weeks the price will move. A new product may need an introductory offer. A seasonal color may need to exit. A gift set belongs in the fourth quarter and should be built before October, which is the point of the launch essay. Between those moments, the price should be the price.

If advertising only hits its target during a coupon, the advertising target is subsidizing a price cut. Change the target or change the page. Do not add a larger coupon. That loop is described from the ad side in the advertising essay.

What we will not claim

We will not cite a conversion lift for charm pricing, for a particular badge, or for a “decoy” SKU. Those studies do not travel intact onto your category. We will not publish a model margin. The useful work is the sheet: landed cost, duty, fees, floor, and a promotion calendar you can explain to a retailer without apologizing.

Book a strategy call

If the US price was converted rather than decided, send a brief or Book a strategy call.