An Amazon MWS developer account needs to be set in order to use this service. 

When the account is set up you will receive a MerchantID and MarketplaceID that will be used within iMerchant. 

The account can be set up at the following URL: http://amzn.to/2oAdbMa 

• When signing up for the account, select the option that allows an application to access your seller account. 
• This is usually the second or third choice. When signing up you will need to enter Computac’s developer account identifier number 8283-3253-7181.
  • Details can be found on Page 6 of the Amazon Marketplace Web Service Developers guide.
  • The guide is available from Amazon at:  http://amzn.to/2nFEOnD
• Enter the Account information into [i]merchant under Tools > Options > Account Information tab.
• Enter the Amazon MerchantID and MarketplaceID.
• Check the Use Amazon Marketplace Web Service box to enable the feature.
• Choose the Import Priority in the Import Options section to tell iMerchant how to merge the Amazon and Venstock data.
• Field and Binding mappings in the Import Options area will control the data being imported.
  • Field Mappings allows the blended Venstock/Amazon information to be assigned to iMerchant fields.
  • Binding mappings allow the Venstock/Amazon codes to be translated to iMerchant Binding codes.

iMerchant will automatically use the system option settings when a product is being imported or in the used buying/processing module. 

iMerchant will search venstock and Amazon then blend the data based on the import priority setting. 

Any field that is not present from the primary location will be assigned the value from the secondary location. 

The blended data is then used to populate fields based on the field mapping as well as the Department Category and Binding mappings to assign data to an [i]merchant product. 

This blended data is also used during used buying and processing when applying the pricing rules. 

When adding product, if the product is not found in Venstock, the Amazon data is still searched so non-book items like DVDs and Music can be found.

The Amazon service includes many of the Amazon departments or product categories. 

Since the service is designed to promote items and not pin point an item, it offers up many items that could match the product number. 

iMerchant attempts to filter this list to select the correct item rather then forcing the user to select from a list. 

iMerchant will only consider results from the Amazon Book, DVD, Music, VideoGames, SoftwareVideoGames and Software departments. 

The Amazon service is not used in the standard Venstock finder.  

Data presented on the Venstock finder and detail screens is only from Venstock.

These forms have a “Find on Amazon” button that will take the target product number and find it on Amazon. 

This data will be presented in a separate Amazon finder form. 

By default, the Amazon finder shows the information as received from Amazon. 

A check box is available on the top of the form that allows the data to be blended with Venstock. 

The blended results apply the system option settings so that the data can be viewed as the import and pricing rules will see them.

Additional search criteria are available when using the Amazon web service. 

The Amazon Sales rank and the Genre are fields unique to the Amazon service.  

These can be included in the pricing rules. 

Also it is recommended that the rules be written to use the Binding and Department category mapping results when possible. This allows the translated iMerchant values to be used in the rules minimizing the number of rules required. 

Also the rules will automatically adjust if the mappings are changed.

The Amazon MWS has a throttling algorithm built into the server to prevent the service from being overwhelmed. 

Details of throttling are outlined in the Amazon Marketplace Web Service Developers guide: http://amzn.to/2opfmQE

iMerchant uses the “ListMatchingProducts” operation of the MWS service when searching for products.