ASINs, EANs and SKUs: how does Amazon know what your product is?
A translation guide for the acronyms flying around every Amazon meeting.
An EAN, or more broadly a GTIN, is the barcode identity of your product, issued through GS1 and recognised everywhere, not just on Amazon. An ASIN is Amazon’s own identifier for the product page, one per product per marketplace. A SKU is your internal label for a specific offer or stock line, and only you ever see it.
When you list a product, Amazon matches your EAN against its catalogue. If the product exists, you attach to the existing ASIN; if not, a new ASIN is created. This is why duplicate pages, wrong matches and stray content usually trace back to barcode discipline, and why brands should own their GS1 registrations rather than borrow codes.
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