Amazon Pricing Study: The Most Expensive Products, Category Volatility, and Seasonal Price Shifts

Average Prices for the Most Popular Amazon Products

Our study showed that the average product price across all categories is $142.74. But while Amazon is often loved for its lower-priced goods, our list of most popular products also features items that are on the high-price end of the spectrum.

Apart from the Amazon gift card, all the products within the most expensive category are tech-related, with gaming products dominating the list.

As the past year has been marked by growing prices for computer components, the top 15 features three types of graphics cards.

If you want a more nuanced look, here’s a list of the most expensive products on an ASIN (aka product listing) level:

***The table above features pricing for specific products. The average pricing implies that we might have spotted a different price level over various time periods.

Once again, we can see that the most expensive products are all gaming related, with video projectors and gaming chairs topping the list.

Amazon’s Most Expensive Product Categories

While we’ve established that tech/digital products, and gaming especially, make up the most expensive category, what about the rest?

The real decline in pricing occurs after the fourth priciest category—Entertainment. In fact, tech and digital products typically cost more than the products within the five cheapest categories combined.

We analyzed product prices every single day over three months. This helped us pinpoint some daily pricing change patterns.

With the average product price being at $142.74, we did see some variations throughout the months.

On December 2, 2021, the average price went down to $132.84. On January 2, 2022, it jumped to $157.22.

Although certain days in December did feature somewhat lower prices for the analyzed products, the graph above shows that there was no notable price drop during Black Friday or the winter holiday season (we’ll get to that a bit later).

Does Amazon Have Any Happy Hours / Happy Days?

While the pricing volatility doesn’t look dramatic, day-to-day and hour-to-hour stats can reflect more significant shifts.

A happy hour/day on Amazon would look different to sellers and buyers—the former would need to know when the pricing hits its peak, while the latter would love to find out the “cheapest” options.

We analyzed the pricing for all the products and managed to pinpoint certain days and hours that repeatedly feature the highest and lowest prices—all to understand whether there are any set pricing patterns.

If you want to sell your product at the highest price, try to encourage post-New Year sales.

Our analysis showed that the most ‘expensive’ days for the majority of products were between January 1 and January 10, with January 4 featuring the highest prices.

And if you manage to drive evening sales—anywhere between 5 pm and 2 am—you’d be in for the biggest win.

As we’ve unwrapped the most favorable days for Amazon sellers, we can also reveal the worst.

Days around Black Friday (November 26)—especially a few days before (November 21–23) and a few days after (November 28–29)—came with the lowest prices across the board.

A curious note: our analysis shows that the two days that preceded Black Friday, November 24–25, didn’t make it to the list of the cheapest days.

Time-wise, we spotted that morning sales aren’t the best as the lowest product prices typically occur between 4 am and 12 pm.

When we averaged the price over all of the products for each hour of the day, we spotted that the highest price occurs at 6 pm EDT and the lowest at midnight.

The Most ‘Expensive’ Days on Amazon for Various Product Categories

The data above reflects the best shopping and sales time across various Amazon products. Now, are there any patterns specific to each category?

5% of the products saw peaking prices on January 1–2 and January 11, making them the most ‘expensive’ days across the analyzed period.

The ‘cheapest’ days were November 18 (9.4% of the products had the lowest average price), November 30 (5%), and November 29 (4%).

Overall, the majority of categories seem to have the lowest prices around Black Friday. The top prices typically occur after the winter holidays.

Browse through the table below for a more granular view of the most expensive and cheapest days for each category.

We answered the “when” side of pricing volatility, so now it’s time to address the “what.”

To discover the most price-volatile products on Amazon, we’ve calculated a variation coefficient that reflects the extent of price dispersion around each product’s mean price.

From a quick look at the table below, you can immediately spot that it’s gaming products once again that dominate the list.

At the time, these items were out of stock in stores and that increased demand drove up the prices. As items come back in stock, the prices would drop quickly to match the retail pricing.

Now that we understand some typical pricing patterns, it’s time to unveil what happens during the hottest sale seasons.

As customers see prices with strikethroughs and “special deal” labels, it’s intuitive to assume that the largest discounts take place during special occasions.

But does the price really drop all that much during the biggest discount dates? We looked at the pricing shifts during Black Friday and Christmas to find the answer.

Can You Really Strike a Bargain During Black Friday?

Our analysis shows that it doesn’t seem like the price drops a lot for hot sale seasons.

Let’s consider pricing differences for Black Friday. We looked at the prices one week before one of the biggest discount days (19–25 November) and compared them against the prices in the following week (27 November–3 December).

The average product on Black Friday costs $137.46. This is only 4% lower than the average price overall ($142.74).

Also, compared to the week right before Black Friday, the Black Friday prices are only 0.5% lower, and then they seem to drop a little bit more (1.5% for the next 7 days).

Here’s a depiction of the average pricing trend during the entire Black Friday period (19 November–3 December):

As you can see, there is no significant price drop even on the day of the biggest sales, Black Friday itself (November 26).

Looking at specific products, the following had the largest price drops during the Black Friday period:

As you can see, this set is now filled with fewer tech/digital products, with more everyday items topping the list—walkie-talkies, books, binoculars, bathroom organizers, etc.

As the graph above indicates, if the product has a significant price drop during Black Friday, it doesn’t go back up right after it.

Black Friday’s shopping craze allows some products to capitalize on this by simply increasing the pricing.

We can’t be sure whether vendors think a shopping-busy customer won’t notice the increase, but these products’ prices were actually higher on Black Friday than during the rest of the analyzed period:

If you were waiting for Black Friday sales to buy a PS4 or Amazon Echo, our data says that was a bad idea.

Some products do come with BF-inspired discounts (one week before) but actually increase the price on the day itself:

If you were looking for some of the products in the table above, you should have considered purchasing them one week before Black Friday.

The graph below shows products that saw peaking prices on Black Friday if we compare the pricing one week before and after November 26. This implies that these vendors might have artificially increased the prices just for Black Friday:

All in all, anything gaming typically comes at a higher price around the Black Friday period, so don’t expect a good bargain there.

In the majority of cases, sellers have been taking Black Friday as an opportunity to win new customers, gain visibility, and achieve sales velocity without much focus on earning money. Some sellers, however, are using strategies that also help to capitalize on sales— they raise the prices of products 30 or 45 days before Black Friday and then apply high discounts. We can see this in the historical price movements of Keepa or CamelCamelCamel, for example. But at least for the sellers I know and the products I have in pricing tracking, I think that Black Friday is still not seen as a period to bill a lot or make money, but as an opportunity to get more visibility.

Do Christmas Sales Come with Better Bargains?

If Black Friday at least came with some price drops—4% to be precise—Christmas sales led to even deeper disappointment from a customer perspective.

To our surprise, our data showed that…the average product price only increased during Christmas—by a whopping 4%—jumping to $148.57.

On Christmas itself, prices were 4.7% higher than during the week before and 2% higher than during the week after.

Only the following products came with a more or less notable price drop (comparing 24–26 December prices to the entire analyzed period):

Unlike Black Friday, Christmas sales seem like a good time for anything PlayStation as well as Christmas-related goods (mainly decorations that won’t typically sell at any other time before the next holiday).

For a last-minute bargain, here’s a list of products that saw more significant price drops during Christmas itself compared to the average price from a week before:

Here are the products that came with the lowest price decrease during Christmas if we compare the pricing just a week before and after Christmas:

All in all, unlike Black Friday, Christmas looks like the best time to purchase gaming products.

Here’s a list of items that saw peaking prices over Christmas compared to the entire analyzed period: ​​

If everyday products saw the largest price drops during Black Friday, over Christmas, they came with higher costs.

For instance, the very same binoculars that were discounted by more than 50% on Black Friday came with a 50% higher price on Christmas. The same with books for 3-year-olds, walkie-talkies, and some other products.

This means that we can see a counter-pattern: products that see the largest discounts on Black Friday typically cost more than usual at Christmas, and vice versa.

Another curious note is that if PlayStation products saw the biggest price drops at Christmas, Nintendo doesn’t follow its competitor’s footsteps. “Switch games” showed the biggest price growth.

We noted that some of the Christmas staples remain affordable throughout the holiday as some prices of typical Christmas products go up straight after the holidays are over.

But there are a few dates when buying Christmas-related goods would be a big no as we spotted two price peaks right before Christmas—December 22 at 3 pm; and December 27 at 4 am.