Grocery Stockouts and Seller Performance in Amazon's Marketplaces

This study examines the relationship between grocery stockouts and sales performance on Amazon's marketplaces in five countries—Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Using a dataset that comprises more than 290,000 distinct grocery products, we find that Amazon has higher sales and lower stockout rates than its third-party sellers. Our analysis also reveals strong negative correlations between stockout rates and sales performance across all countries. Specifically, when products are unavailable for a 90-day period, average sales rankings across all seller types are 14%–67% higher, indicating lower sales performance. The correlation between stockouts and sales rankings appears stronger for Amazon's own products compared to those sold by third-party sellers. These results highlight how grocery inventory availability relates to sales performance across different seller types in Amazon's e-commerce ecosystem, with implications for both platform operators and third-party sellers.