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Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

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Re: Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

#71

Post by sidlls »

chillacy wrote: post #20
saltedonion wrote: post #13

I don’t see what’s wrong with this. Many retailers reserve some of their best shelves paces for their private label products, both as a form of differentiation and to extract higher margins. You could argue that Amazon is unique in that it is large and potentially has a monopoly over eCommerce, but it is hard to say that in the end, consumers are on the loosing end. Most amazon basic products are commodities, and pri…

Add to this the fact that a lot of these brands don’t even manufacture their items in the first place: they source manufacturers and slap their logo and marketing on, then markup the item price. Does that really add value? In some cases the private label even uses the same manufacturers, the people producing the product still get paid in the end.

The value in those private label items is sometimes the aesthetic is more appealing. One example: the pattern on a textile such as a curtain or blanket, or the colors/patterns on casing for an electronics item.

There are considerations people have that are above and beyond the purely utilitarian.

Re: Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

#72

Post by Spivak »

dhruvkar wrote: post #18
Fauntleroy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh definitely, if you ignore the whole monopoly aspect.

I see this argument a lot for Amazon. monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service. Aren't suppliers free to start their own store, drive traffic to it and make money? Aren't suppliers free to list their products on Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, Etsy, Shopify etc.? How is this considered a monopoly? I'm actually interested in an answer. I might be missing something.

I think the strongest case I could make is that the advantage of stores like Amazon (and Target) is customer acquisition. They're where customers go to discover products and comparison shop. The limited resource they control is the supply of customers who are there to buy a specific type of good. And buy favoring certain products they can choose the winners/losers in this game and edge their own products in.

Re: Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

#74

Post by modeless »

aeturnum wrote: post #52
saltedonion wrote: post #13

I don’t see what’s wrong with this. Many retailers reserve some of their best shelves paces for their private label products, both as a form of differentiation and to extract higher margins. You could argue that Amazon is unique in that it is large and potentially has a monopoly over eCommerce, but it is hard to say that in the end, consumers are on the loosing end. Most amazon basic products are commodities, and pri…

I think it's easy to describe why it's problematic without even referring to antitrust. Amazon's brand (as a store / marketplace) is that it helps you sort through many options to select the product they believe you will like the best. This is different from the service offered by traditional grocery stores which offer many different products, but are not arranging those products in relation to a particular request.…

> Amazon's brand (as a store / marketplace) is that it helps you sort through many options to select the product they believe you will like the best

This is an extremely important part of the service that every store provides. The only difference with Amazon is that they offer a wider selection of everything. In brick and mortar stores, only one or a few products of each type are stocked and the rest are simply not offered. You don't think about the store providing the service of sorting the products that they decided not to offer, but they do.

Re: Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

#76

Post by notyourwork »

latortuga wrote: post #69
sevensor wrote: post #44

Amazon's own-brand goods are generally servicible from what I've seen. It puts them at a competitive advantage that their own items are quite unlikely to be counterfeit, while all other brands are subject to suspicion.

That's some pretty serious doublespeak. A huge portion of the problem of counterfeits is a result of Amazon's decision to comingle inventory.

Do they co-mingle their own products? Seems unlikely a 3P could FBA some Amazon Basics products.

Re: Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

#77

Post by saltking112 »

aeturnum wrote: post #52
saltedonion wrote: post #13

I don’t see what’s wrong with this. Many retailers reserve some of their best shelves paces for their private label products, both as a form of differentiation and to extract higher margins. You could argue that Amazon is unique in that it is large and potentially has a monopoly over eCommerce, but it is hard to say that in the end, consumers are on the loosing end. Most amazon basic products are commodities, and pri…

I think it's easy to describe why it's problematic without even referring to antitrust. Amazon's brand (as a store / marketplace) is that it helps you sort through many options to select the product they believe you will like the best. This is different from the service offered by traditional grocery stores which offer many different products, but are not arranging those products in relation to a particular request.…

> you might imagine a supermarket which stocks all brands, but the first item in every row is the store-brand equivalent of that product which you must remove to get to the branded one.

I think this is going a bit too far. "removing to get to the branded one" would be appropriate if you had to go to 2nd page of search results to see branded products, but most results on Amazon show competing products above the fold.

A better comparison would be reserving the best shelf space for Amazon Basics.

Re: Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

#78

Post by sigjuice »

beamatronic wrote: post #73

I wanted a shredder. Wirecutter recommended the AmazonBasics one. I bought it. It’s great. Wanted another one. No longer made! Bummer. Need some light bulbs. AmazonBasics ones look good. Oh, doesn’t ship to California.

That is so strange. Why wouldn't they ship light bulbs to California?

Re: Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

#79

Post by throwaway_USD »

saltking112 wrote: post #35
throwaway_USD wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under Anti-trust law Company A and Company B can do the same exact thing, but 1 Company may violate Anti-trust laws while the other doesn't. >You could argue that Amazon is unique in that it is large and potentially has a monopoly over eCommerce, but it is hard to say that in the end, consumers are on the loosing end. It is not about a "monopoly", under Anti-trust you can't unfairly leverage your market position to f…

but some industries clearly needs economies of scale in order to provide the consumer with cheaper and better products. Can you truly argue just because a firm is large they are no longer allowed to offer the same product for cheaper simply because they have a strong foothold in distribution?

>Can you truly argue just because a firm is large ...

1. I am not arguing anything, I did not develop Anti-trust law nor did I argue for or against it.

2. I never mentioned the the size of the Firm, because that isn't the legal standard. As I said what matters is unfairly forcing competition out of the market.

What Amazon does is has other businesses develop products and markets for those products on the Amazon marketplace. Then Amazon uses its data to determine which products are selling and what Amazon shoppers are looking for, then Amazon copies the product and uses all kinds unfair practices to force out the market incumbents...and in many case once the Amazon has forced out the market incumbent (again to the detriment of consumers), then Amazon has a history of raising their product price (again to detriment of consumers).

But we get it, to you Amazon hasn't done anything wrong and the consumers are better off and should be thanking Amazon. I'm not argue otherwise, just simply saying that is inconsistent under Anti-Trust laws.

Re: Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Products First

#80

Post by llsf »

doener wrote: post #6
nojito wrote: post #5

No different than when you go to the store and the store's brand products are at eye level and the name brands are lower on the shelf.

Very different, because Amazon is mot one market, but THE market online in the Western World.

Particularly true in US. But less so in Europe. And worldwide, Amazon is not number one at all. 1. Taobao.com: 16% of worldwide e-commerce 2. Tmall.com: 13% 3. Amazon: 10% 4. JD.com: 8% (source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/664814/global-e-commerce...)

The lack of competition in US (Walmart and Target took e-commerce seriously only recently) let Amazon take almost 50% of e-commerce. But hopefully Ebay, Walmart, Target and Costco would add more competition.

Painting Amazon like this only online market that we cannot escape is a bit misleading. Amazon has a long way to go to beat the asian e-commerce, and now has domestically more competition with Walmart, Target and Costco.

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