Chapter�3.營ntroduction to the Product Advertising API

Introduction to the Product Advertising API

Topics

This introduction to Product Advertising API gives you a detailed summary of this web service. After reading this section, you should have a good idea of what it offers and how it can fit in with your business.

Overview of Product Advertising API

Amazon has spent over ten years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing a world-class web service that millions of customers use every day. As a developer, you can build Product Advertising API applications that leverage this robust, scalable, and reliable technology. You get access to much of the data that is used by Amazon, including the items for sale, customer reviews, seller reviews, as well as most of the functionality that you see on www.amazon.com, such as finding items, finding similar items, displaying customer reviews, and product promotions. In short, Product Advertising API operations open the doors to Amazon's databases so that you can take advantage of Amazon's sophisticated e-commerce data and functionality. Build your own web store to sell Amazon items or your own items.

Best of all, Product Advertising API is free. By signing up to become a Product Advertising API developer, you join the tens of thousands of developers who are already realizing financial gains by creating Product Advertising API-driven applications and web stores. In 2006, Product Advertising API developers sold well over $600 million worth of items. Would you like a percentage of that revenue?

Business Model

E-commerce is the practice of conducting business over the Internet. This guide explains in detail how you can use Product Advertising API operations to create storefronts in which you enable Internet customers to search for your items, see pictures of them, find related items, get customer reviews, and purchase items.

With e-commerce, the barrier of distance between the shopper and the store goes away: the local video store must compete with stores across the country. E-commerce levels the playing field: the web site of an individual seller can appear as sophisticated and intoxicating as that of a major retailer. Product Advertising API is your opportunity to enter the world market where patronage is not limited by the size of your storefront, foot traffic or locality. Welcome to the world of Product Advertising API e-commerce.

Architectural Overview of Product Advertising API

How Product Advertising API works

1	Your application uses the Product Advertising API to supply item descriptions and images, and customer and seller reviews, which you present to your customers.
2	Customers shop on your web site.
3	When the customer is ready to purchase the items in their e-commerce shopping cart, your application sends an HTML form to Product Advertising API and Amazon completes the purchase by getting purchase information, such as payment method and shipping address, and then Amazon fulfills the order by shipping the items.