Good. Once Amazon has gobbled up all competition, we can have one reliable place to buy every thing we'll ever need. All detractors are impeding on the approach of utopia.
Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
241–250 of 727 posts
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
that solves the problem for suppliers, but creates one for consumers with lower competition. Less competition, higher prices. *just noticed I was down voted, likely by MichaelApproved because he has 7500 Karma and I only have 156. I'm starting to really hate contributing to HackerNews discussions because it's fully of a bunch of bullies who pound on your karma if you don't agree with their viewpoints. Bring on the do…
Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. To your point, though, lower competition is not always bad. I as a consumer very much prefer having to deal with fewer toilet paper suppliers if they are of good enough quality. The toilet paper indus…
The cheapest pack comes FROM competition. You, as the consumer, want the cheapest pack. You want competition. It's the most basic of economic principles.
P.S. making comments without a basic education of a topic is equally boring to read. I would rather you say it and have the chance to learn than silence you though.
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, let's be objective for a minute here. Do you really believe that Walmart, Target, Costco, Kroger, etc, are more ethical with their suppliers than Amazon? Let's not forget that many of these large retailers have moved to the practice of taking up to 90 days to pay their suppliers. 90 DAYS! That's three months before you see the money of the product you sold through their channels. And they do this because they…
I've done consulting for small business distributing into major stories. Other stores are very very UPFRONT on what they will do. Many make the small mfg sign an agreement that not only will the store have all the data, but the mfg will need to pay the STORE if they want the data. The difference here is that a) it is all upfront and b) the mfg can make an informed decision - is this worth it. If you need store / day…
> Finally, in grocery retail - once you have the order and deliver, you DO get paid regardless of whether product sells.
It's been quite a long time since I worked in the grocery business, but I don't think this is accurate. A lot of vendors stock their products themselves or use food brokers that do it, and they are on the hook for expired and returned product. And there was a shitload of bribery and corruption happening to steal shelf space and end unit space from competitors. It's a surprisingly cut throat business.
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagree, what I do think we need is any retailer who has their own product lines in store must clearly identify that they are store brands.
That's what Amazon Basics is and does.
Amazon basics isnt the only amazon store brand, it has many others that are not labeled amazon in any way.
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#245Target and probably other physical retailers do the same exact thing. Bring a product line in. See how it sells. Replace that with a white label brand they own once data proves a winner.
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You're either a platform/retailer or you're a manufacturer. You don't get to be both Ok, done. Now what are manufacturers supposed to do when Amazon and Walmart start bullying them some other way? You just made shipping their product directly to the customer against the law.
No, that's not what a platform is. You can always sell your product direct to consumer. You just can't be the intermediary for both your own and other companies' products on the same site.
The software corollary would be that Apple can no longer host GarageBand and Keynote on the App Store, and Google can no longer host GMail or Google Docs on the Play Store.
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the biggest issue isn't the "copy product by leveraging data", but more like, their products play by a different set of rules. They could copy products and launch them abiding by the same guidelines, policies and everything else. That's not the case, and that's where the unfairness comes to play: Amazon plays on their market place by a different set of rules. It's not only Amazon. Google, Apple, and so on. Th…
if they want such massive platforms and play on such marketplaces, they must obey their own guidelines, else they are either stripped from the playground or someone else should own the play ground. So here's a question: Is a store really a marketplace? It seems to me that Amazon, Target, Macys, etc, do a lot of curation and editorial work with regards to standards of production and marketing for items in their stores…
I understand your idea, but I still think they are and should be defined as marketplaces, with a scrutiny any marketplace should get.
The first reason is, Amazon isn't doing much curation (if any), due to their size they can't do proper curation, and bots are terrible at it (either based on keywords or reporting). This is proven by counterfeit items being sold, listings being stolen/manipulated, biased report systems.
Then Amazon claims they aren't liable for the products sold - the customer belongs to Amazon (you can't even have access to their names anymore), the listings belong to Amazon, everything except what arrives at the door.
At last, Sellers pay for the product advertising Amazon does, it's called a Referral Fee (ranges from 8% to 15%). In fact, the Seller pays for everything (and they should, yet the amounts are up for discussion).
So they have all the symptoms of a marketplace, yet Amazon plays what ever role is more suitable for them.
I only think they should be enforced the rules of a market place in any developed place in the world.
No real private marketplace would be open if they were selling counterfeits. Even if they sold legit products as well, until they purged everything counterfeit they would not be open, and they'd pay fines for it.
I bet if any public Health/Goods inspection force would be deployed on ANY amazon warehouse, they'd find shady shit. But such public organizations don't have the tools/protocols to do what they do in the real world.
I agree with you when you say, this isn't limited to Amazon.
For example, why can't we get the full data from the customer that purchases from us? Why can't they be our customer on Amazon? Amazon hoards everything, and we get the scraps.
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#248The solution isn't hoping the free market would solve this with a competing platform. The solution is to create regulations & laws that prevent this behavior. You're either a platform/retailer or you're a manufacturer. You don't get to be both because we see the perverse incentive that happens when it's allowed.
That's what India basically regulated with Amazon. i.e. a company can't sell proudts on their open-market platform from companies you have a stake in (or your own generics presumably?). https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2019/02/01/new-ecommerce-...
FTA:
>The new rules could wipe out nearly half the products on Amazon.in, said Satish Meena, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “It’s likely to disrupt availability for customers,” he said.
>The biggest beneficiary from the tightened rules could be Reliance, which is India’s largest private company and owns the country’s biggest brick and mortar retail chain.
In theory India standing up to giant foreign corporations. In practice, a huge giveaway to another giant corporation at the expense of Indian consumers and a big warning to other companies hoping to expand to or invest in India.
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A law like this would have to be applied to them as well. You say it as if that was a bad thing. More competition is good for the consumer, bad for the oligopolists.
But Amazon launching new products is strictly more competition, so...
Similarly how Microsoft launching Internet Explorer to beat Netscape and eat another Market was technically more competition (for a while, until they've established another monopoly and all competition ceases).
Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon has promised individual sellers it would not use the data for their products to market against them (not individual buyers). Despite the ludicrous lengths Amazon goes here to say there were multiple sellers and so this data was aggregate, we all understand (and amazon did too) that if you generate statistics such as median sale price per month / day etc where 99.95% of the data comes from one seller, you have…
> Amazon has promised individual sellers it would not use the data for their products to market against them (not individual buyers). Again, there's that word. Individual. They get off on a technicality with that comment to congress. The second you have even 0.05% (Your example, not mine.) of any category occupied by a second reseller, you're no longer targeting individuals -- you're entering a 'product vertical'. Am…
If they aggregate data from individuals, they're using the individual's data. They didn't get off on a technicality, they're simply lying.