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Amazon Is a Monopoly

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261–270 of 348 posts

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#261

Post by jnbiche »

kortilla wrote: post #226
jnbiche wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So don’t sell on Amazon. Whether or not any individual sells on Amazon has absolutely nothing to do with their anti-competitive practices.

But it has absolutely everything to do with determination of monopoly status. If a seller can simply stop selling on amazon and sell with Walmart/EBay/whatever instead, amazon clearly has no monopoly. Same on the customer side.

Fair point. I still think Amazon is engaging in anti-competitive practices (by just selling on the same marketplace they maintain).

But my argument was poor.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#262

Post by whatshisface »

nradov wrote: post #253
dylan604 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I've worked for a company where Walmart was the largest retailer for their product (DVDs). They were constantly being beat up to lower their wholesale prices while also demanding a separate SKU with edited content. Amazon is no different in this case (except not demanding edited content). Whenever I asked about this, they said you still had to provide product for sale wherever the customers were. The la…

The manufacturing cost for DVDs is close to zero so sellers have room to cut prices. They aren't comparable to appliances.

Licencing and content production cost money, though.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#263

Post by angstrom »

dylan604 wrote: post #170
scarface74 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been complaining about basically the same thing with respect to Walmart for decades.

Exactly this. I've worked for a company where Walmart was the largest retailer for their product (DVDs). They were constantly being beat up to lower their wholesale prices while also demanding a separate SKU with edited content. Amazon is no different in this case (except not demanding edited content). Whenever I asked about this, they said you still had to provide product for sale wherever the customers were. The la…

I’ve worked for Amazon. The thing you have to remember on the retail side is much of the focus is on CP (contribution profit) and much of analysis has to do with finding the largest negative CP products in different marketplaces and pulling levers to make them less negative. There’s a large number of negative CP items carried just because it improves customer selection which helps drive larger cart orders. I never heard of squeezing more profits out of already profitable products probably because positive CP is an indicator of a competitive price point.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#264

Post by soulofmischief »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #242
dodobirdlord wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less. In a competitive system profit margins should trend downward. They won't necessarily reach 0 in the limit, because at some point you'll reach the point where everyone has something better to do with their resources than move into your market and undercut you (and you have no better prospect by undercutting anyone else). A profit margin of 0 is a stable equilibrium, but equilibria can also be reached whe…

This factoid has failed so many times it's astonishing it keeps being repeated. Any competitive system tends towards monopoly/oligoply. Market mechanisms encourage monopoly/cartel price/payment fixing that benefits shareholders/owners through strong-arming of downstream businesses, and - depending on the market - of customers. There is no "moving into the market", because as soon as a market consolidates around one o…

How would one split up Facebook? Amazon? What would it look like?

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#265

Post by skinnymuch »

ernst_klim wrote: post #233
alexgmcm wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Telecoms and the old Robber Barons had monopolies without government forcing people. I mean there are areas where peoples only choice of ISP is Comcast and equally the Government wasn't forcing people to buy Standard Oil. Any monopoly is bad because it allows them to ignore consumers as there is no competition.

> But Telecoms and the old Robber Barons had monopolies without government forcing people. Telecoms were totally built by govs. Back in the days govs were obsessed with controlling the means of communication, so all the related biz was due to the monopoly right. > AT&T established a network of subsidiaries in the United States and Canada that held a government-authorized phone service monopoly, formalized with the Ki…

But everyone does lobbying. Singling our Comcast like that is weird to prove a point of government and telecoms. Even if they are in the top 10.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#266

Post by skinnymuch »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #222
Alupis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure that it can control prices Amazon very often competes directly with sellers on the Marketplace, and often undercuts them on price. There are products they sell below the purchase cost, sometimes below manufacturing cost. You can't compete with that unless you have piles of money to burn. They sell at a loss until they shake everyone loose from a product, then dominate all sales of that products on the…

> They sell at a loss until they shake everyone loose from a product, then dominate all sales of that products on the Marketplace, raising prices to profitability when they feel like it. This has actually happened? Can you point me to examples with price charts?

They famously did their whole competition with Diapers.com and their parent company. That wasn’t an Amazon marketplace competitor though. But it was pretty ruthless of Amazon.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#267

Post by efa »

IloveHN84 wrote: post #211

Well, years ago, when Amazon wasn't a monopoly, who had the choice to make it one? The final user. Personally, I've never used Amazon before seeing a friend ordering a fairly huge amount of stuff from there. Prior to that, I was a not-so-obsessed-from-ecommerce eBay user, where I placed an order maybe every 4-5 months. I've started using Amazon because of its returning policy, which is better that eBay's, but by doin…

Amazon hooked me when they rolled out Prime and free shipping. So now any time I think of something I need, I open the app on my phone and click buy. I feel guilty but it's just so easy. It's a pain purchasing across different sites (different IDs, thinking about shipping cost, return policy/procedure). I know shipping singles items is bad for the environment and a total waste. I keep telling myself I need to get off Amazon.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#268

Post by mikeash »

headsoup wrote: post #216
mikeash wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be really bad, but we're very far from that point.

Depends on what products you want doesn't it? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I've noticed an increasing tendency to not be able to find some products online outside of Amazon, or there is a significant price difference.

What products are those? I haven’t seen them but maybe I’ve just missed them.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#269

Post by AlexandrB »

soulofmischief wrote: post #264
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This factoid has failed so many times it's astonishing it keeps being repeated. Any competitive system tends towards monopoly/oligoply. Market mechanisms encourage monopoly/cartel price/payment fixing that benefits shareholders/owners through strong-arming of downstream businesses, and - depending on the market - of customers. There is no "moving into the market", because as soon as a market consolidates around one o…

How would one split up Facebook? Amazon? What would it look like?

Facebook is easy. Break off Instagram and WhatsApp. Those acquisitions should never have been allowed. Amazon might look like splitting retail from AWS or similar.

Re: Amazon Is a Monopoly

#270

Post by jyu »

blairanderson wrote: post #120

I run a consulting company for Amazon suppliers. We have roughly 2-dozen Amazon suppliers and our first-hand experience is that Amazon is absolutely stifling competition/business to the detriment of customer. The biggest problem is `agreements that restrain trade` is a monopoly practice that happens across the board. They're a black box AND have tiny support systems for their marketplace. One recent example. A client…

This situation sounds overblown.

If you look at Amazon guidance, $X-million / year means you don't hit the threshold to get an Amazon rep. If you're over $10 million / year you do get a rep. Either increase sales to get a rep or stop being a vendor.

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