After the Deal: How Promotions Become the New Price

The holiday season has started

The holiday shopping season began on November 1. Black Friday falls on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30. Amazon has not yet announced its Black Friday Week dates for this year. Last year it opened the event on November 20 and ran it through Cyber Monday.¹ The deadline for sellers to submit Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deals passed on October 20.²

Adobe expects U.S. online sales to reach $275.1 billion between November 1 and December 31, up 6.7% from last year. It forecasts discounts of up to 30% off listed prices during Cyber Week.³

For brands, the question is how deep to go. The answer depends not only on what a discount sells this week, but on what price the market will expect from you after it ends.

What the forecast says about discounts

Adobe’s forecast contains a detail worth noticing. Of the eight product categories it tracks, six are expected to peak at shallower discounts than last year. Only toys and computers are forecast to go deeper.⁴

That fits what some sellers have been saying for a year. In late 2025, merchants told Modern Retail they were reducing or skipping Black Friday promotions as tariffs and Amazon fees cut into their margins.⁵ Many brands are discounting more selectively, and the reasons go beyond this year’s margins.

What Amazon remembers, and what it forgets

Amazon checks every deal against your recent prices. Its standing rule is that a deal or price discount must be at or below the product’s lowest price in the past 30 days, and that lowest price includes earlier promotions, coupons and price discounts.⁶ For the 2026 events, agencies report that Amazon tightened this further: the deal price must also be at or below the lowest price of the past 60 days.⁷

For its own tentpole events, Amazon makes exceptions. It has said Prime Big Deal Days promotional prices are excluded from the 30- and 60-day lookback windows and will not affect the maximum deal price required for Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deals.⁸ Sales during peak events are also excluded from the calculation of the “Typical Price,” the crossed-out reference price shoppers see next to a discount.⁹

So October’s Prime Big Deal Days price does not raise the bar for your Black Friday deal inside Amazon’s system. That is where the protection ends.

What does not forget

Shoppers. Since June 30, 2026, Alexa for Shopping shows 30, 90 and 365 days of price history on product detail pages. Shoppers can also ask it directly whether an item has been on sale recently or whether this is its lowest price.¹⁰ A shopper who saw your product at a holiday price can check whether today’s price is higher, and many will wait for the next event.

Resellers. Retail arbitrage sellers buy during promotions. Their cost basis is your deal price, so any price above it is profit to them. After the event, their stock is relisted on your Amazon listing, often below your normal price and sometimes below your MAP. A discount meant to last a week can keep appearing on your listing well into January.

Your own off-event promotions. The exceptions cover Amazon’s peak events, not every discount you run. A coupon in early December counts toward the lowest price your next deal must beat.⁶ A brand that discounts often also changes its reference price. Since May 18, 2026, if a product is priced below its non-promotional median on more than half the days in a 90-day window, Amazon calculates the Typical Price using all sales, including promotional ones.⁹ Amazon’s own example: sneakers priced at $89.99 for 20 days and $74.99 for 70 days end up with a Typical Price of $74.99, which leaves no strikethrough to show.¹¹

The bottom two rows are the same in both columns. Amazon can choose to set a price aside. The market cannot.

Where MAP fits

Many brands handle holiday promotions by suspending MAP for a set window, sometimes called a MAP holiday. That is a reasonable tool if it is run like a policy, not a favor.

• Announce the dates in writing, in advance, to every reseller. Use the same window and the same floor for everyone. A promotional exception granted to one reseller and not another is the uneven enforcement that undermines a policy, and it can raise legal questions.
• Set an end date and enforce it. Prices should return to MAP when the window closes. The days after Cyber Monday are when violations are most common and most worth documenting.
• Keep promotional depth consistent across channels. A discount on your own site or at another retailer can become the reference Amazon uses to judge your listing, as we described in The Buy Box Just Got Crowded. AI shopping assistants now compare those prices too, as we covered in Your Price Has a New Reader.
• Watch who buys at the deal price. Unusually large orders during an event are often stock that will be resold. The supply that reaches unauthorized sellers in January is frequently bought in November.

Fewer promotions, planned and enforced

Amazon’s own rules point the same way as Adobe’s forecast. A small number of planned, well-defined promotions protects your everyday price better than a steady stream of small discounts. Before it runs, each discount should answer three questions: what price the market will expect afterward, who will hold stock bought at that price, and how the price returns to normal when it ends.

Some brands will decide not to discount at all this year. That is a valid choice for some products. For most, the better answer is a short promotion calendar decided in advance and enforced afterward.

How Rocciani can help

We will prepare a free seller and price report for your brand. It covers every seller on your Amazon listings, how your price moved through Prime Big Deal Days, and whether it returned to its pre-event level afterward. We can run the same check after Cyber Monday.

Pricing is our specialty. Our pricing team holds PhD and Master’s degrees in Economics and Data Science. We use our own monitoring software to track advertised prices and sellers continuously, including through promotional windows.

If you want the channel managed, we act as your authorized wholesale partner on Amazon. We plan promotions with you around your price architecture, purchase inventory from you, and report every offer that stays below your price after an event ends.

Request your free seller and price report →