What is the Amazon Shopper Panel and how does it work?

October 20, 2020*

Shoppers have more choices than ever. It’s now commonplace for shoppers to visit both online and physical stores even within the journey of a single purchase—for example, by searching for a product in a brick-and-mortar store, paying for it online, and then picking it up curbside. This breadth of options enables people to find the best products for their needs at the lowest prices, and get them in the way that’s most convenient.

In this incredibly competitive retail environment, Amazon works with brands of all sizes to help them grow their businesses not just in our store, but also across the myriad of places customers shop. We also work hard to provide our selling partners—and small businesses in particular—with tools, insights, and data to help them be successful in our store. But our store is just one piece of the puzzle. Customers routinely use Amazon to discover and learn about products before purchasing them elsewhere. In fact, Amazon only represents 4% of US retail sales. Brands therefore often look to third-party consumer panel and business intelligence firms like Nielsen and NPD, and many segment-specific data providers, for additional information. Such opt-in consumer panels are well-established and used by many companies to gather consumer feedback and shopping insights. These firms aggregate shopping behaviors across stores to report data like average sales price, total units sold, and revenue on tens of thousands of the most popular products.

This has inspired us to explore how we could better support sellers and brands by also providing insights from beyond our store. The Amazon Shopper Panel is the result. Over time, the new Amazon Shopper Panel can help advertisers understand how their ads support their sales at other retailers – and through panel surveys, help them improve their products and grow their businesses. It also provides immediate rewards to participants who choose to join the panel, and will benefit all of our customers in the form of better shopping, product, and advertising experiences.

What is the Amazon Shopper Panel?

The Amazon Shopper Panel offers participants the opportunity to earn more than $10 a month by sharing receipts from purchases made outside of Amazon.com, completing short surveys, and enabling ad verification for the ads they see from Amazon’s own advertising or third-party businesses that advertise through Amazon Ads. Amazon will aggregate and anonymize information that panelists choose to share and use it to improve advertising measurement and relevance and help brands with product research—as well as improve the product and content selection on Amazon. For example, we can use panel metrics to report on a brand’s total Amazon Ads-attributed sales for purchases made off-line, or a brand could field a panel survey to inform a new product they’re developing. Participation is 100% voluntary, no individual panelist information is ever shared with third parties, and panelists can choose to stop participating at any time.

How does it work?

The size of the Amazon Shopper Panel is currently limited. Customers receiving an invitation can download the app from the App Store or Google Play Store. Participating is easy—here’s how it works:

  • Download the app and sign in using your Amazon credentials.
  • Individuals who choose to join can submit photos of eligible receipts via the Amazon Shopper Panel app or forward email receipts to receipts@panel.amazon.com. Ten or more eligible receipts per month equals a $10 monthly reward, and all receipts count equally.
  • Rewards can be credited to panelists' Amazon Balance at the end of the month, or donated to one of the 12 charitable organizations listed in the app. Panelists can change their reward selection monthly.
  • Unlike other panel or loyalty programs, there is no need to track or redeem points.
  • There are also opportunities to answer survey questions. Each survey comes with its own reward amount, which is displayed in the app.
  • Panelists can also earn monthly rewards by enabling ad verification to let Amazon confirm the ads you see. Ads from Amazon can include Amazon’s own advertising or third-party businesses that advertise through Amazon Ads.
  • Panelists decide how they want to participate. They can choose to submit receipts, answer survey questions, or both. If they choose to only answer survey questions, they will only receive the rewards associated with those surveys.

At Amazon, nothing is more important to us than earning the trust of our customers. We take data security and privacy seriously. All information participants choose to share as part of the Amazon Shopper Panel is handled in strict accordance with our privacy notice, and panelists have complete control—we only receive information they explicitly choose to provide (via receipt submissions, survey responses, or ads they have seen), and panelists can delete receipts or stop participating at any time. When a panelist deletes a receipt within the app, any receipt information in our system is also deleted.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Amazon Shopper Panel or joining the wait list, you can download the app or visit panel.amazon.com.

*Where is the Amazon Shopper Panel available?
The Amazon Shopper Panel launched in October 2020. It is currently available in the US, UK, CA, FR, ES and DE**.
**Receipt sharing is not available in DE at this time.