Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 466 posts

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#231

Post by gok »

Lots of comments here of the format "every store does this."

No, no other store operates this way. Walmart and Costco do not have a little flea market of third party sellers inside their stores who run their own logistics. This would be more like Amazon being both an anchor tenant and owner of a mall, and requiring that every other store within the mall provide all their sales information, then rapidly evicting all the successful stores and replacing them with knock off stores that they also own.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#232

Post by NegativeLatency »

Manuel_D wrote: post #225
jasallen wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is between retailer and marketplace. Both Amazon and Costco are retailers, and both could use that knowledge to decide what products to self-source for better retail margins. Either way, still a retailer, but maybe also a manufacturer / wholesaler. But Amazon is also a marketplace. In that role it acts as a "rentable retail space". Using the data of the retailers in your marketplace to decide what to m…

I'm still not understanding the distinction here. Costco and Amazon both sell company-brand products, alongside non-company products. Costco and Amazon collect and analyze sales data from the sale of both company and non-company products.

When Costco sells a product they’ve already bought it (a retailer) on the other hand when Amazon sells something they’re just acting as a middle party for the item in most cases.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#233

Post by Manuel_D »

spaceribs wrote: post #121
sneak wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon pays mountains of payroll taxes, as they are one of the largest employers in the world. The "Amazon pays no taxes" meme is a false one.

I think the meme is "Amazon pays no federal taxes on it's profits", and that is a correct statement.

Isn't that also incorrect? It would presumably pay the normal corporate tax on it's profits. It's just that Amazon reinvests it's revenue and thus has no (or little) profit.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#234

Post by eropple »

Manuel_D wrote: post #225
jasallen wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is between retailer and marketplace. Both Amazon and Costco are retailers, and both could use that knowledge to decide what products to self-source for better retail margins. Either way, still a retailer, but maybe also a manufacturer / wholesaler. But Amazon is also a marketplace. In that role it acts as a "rentable retail space". Using the data of the retailers in your marketplace to decide what to m…

I'm still not understanding the distinction here. Costco and Amazon both sell company-brand products, alongside non-company products. Costco and Amazon collect and analyze sales data from the sale of both company and non-company products.

Amazon sells products and facilitates others' sales.

If Amazon carried the entirety of their inventory themselves like Costco or like Walmart used to be (before the expansion of their own online marketplace), it would be a distinctly different situation.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#235

Post by FactolSarin »

Manuel_D wrote: post #225
jasallen wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is between retailer and marketplace. Both Amazon and Costco are retailers, and both could use that knowledge to decide what products to self-source for better retail margins. Either way, still a retailer, but maybe also a manufacturer / wholesaler. But Amazon is also a marketplace. In that role it acts as a "rentable retail space". Using the data of the retailers in your marketplace to decide what to m…

I'm still not understanding the distinction here. Costco and Amazon both sell company-brand products, alongside non-company products. Costco and Amazon collect and analyze sales data from the sale of both company and non-company products.

All of Amazon's "we're not actually a monopoly" and "we're not responsible for defective products" arguments are based on this. They claim they are very much NOT a Costco or Walmart.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#236

Post by Manuel_D »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #232
Manuel_D wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not understanding the distinction here. Costco and Amazon both sell company-brand products, alongside non-company products. Costco and Amazon collect and analyze sales data from the sale of both company and non-company products.

When Costco sells a product they’ve already bought it (a retailer) on the other hand when Amazon sells something they’re just acting as a middle party for the item in most cases.

I'm not sure how Costco works specifically, but that's not the case in all retail. At GameStop, game publishers only got paid when their games sold not when they were put on the shelves. If there are 100 disk cases put on the shelves for Call of Battlefield and none of them sold, eventually GameStop would return them and the publisher got nothing.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#237

Post by krumpet »

MengerSponge wrote: post #185
Gasparila wrote: post #175

Thought exercise because I legitimately struggle with this. Is this fundamentally different than Costco using sales data to choose which Kirkland products to launch/sell? If so, how? If not, then why do we not pursue Costco with the same gusto as Amazon? To me this behavior by Amazon seems worse, but I can't figure out why.

Imagine if a Costco sales rep offered to swap something in your cart with the Kirkland clone, or if they suggested the Kirkland product as you reached to grab something else off the shelf.

Take a quick trip the Costco website and you'll see they use the same recommendation tactics. Looking at a bag of Peet's brand coffee, I see Kirkland Signature brand coffee sitting in the "Similar Product". Just saying...

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#238

Post by TheCapn »

bsch wrote: post #150

I'm a third party seller and I just left Amazon. When you buy a book, for example, are you aware that 40% of the sale goes to Amazon? Many sellers sell cheap items at a steep loss just to keep their sale metrics up. A couple bad reviews, etc. and your business is kicked off with little explanation and cold or no way to appeal. Third party sellers are not treated well and I'm not surprised Amazon steals seller data me…

>A couple bad reviews, etc. and your business is kicked off with little explanation

There's got to be a dark underbelly to Amazon going on at the same time. My wife is bored enough that she's taken up a fight with Amazon over some bluetooth earbuds she returned. The earbuds themselves just simply didn't work; they'd do things they're not supposed to and not things they are supposed to so she posted a review saying such.

The seller started contacting my wife trying to bribe her to change her review to 5 stars. My wife updated the review as such saying the seller is trying to coerce her to change her review but she won't budge.

Amazon has now removed my wife's review saying she's "harassing" the seller despite having emails to prove the seller is the one who won't stop contacting her even though she's explicitly requested such. So my wife is battling Amazon asking them to re-instate the review or give her a real reason why it was removed.

It really is to the point where I won't buy from Amazon anymore unless I have no other choice. I don't trust a single thing about their review system. I don't trust a lot of products being unopened/untampered.

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#239

Post by hammock »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #232
Manuel_D wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not understanding the distinction here. Costco and Amazon both sell company-brand products, alongside non-company products. Costco and Amazon collect and analyze sales data from the sale of both company and non-company products.

When Costco sells a product they’ve already bought it (a retailer) on the other hand when Amazon sells something they’re just acting as a middle party for the item in most cases.

>When Costco sells a product they’ve already bought it (a retailer)

In practice that's not the case at all. Many if not most retailers require suppliers to buy back unsold inventory

Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

#240

Post by flavius29663 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #24
amelius wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stallman said it too: https://stallman.org/amazon.html > We should not allow a company to have a share over around 10% of any market. If in a certain field a single dominant company is beneficial for society, that means it is a natural monopoly, and should be served by a regulated utility.

either that or the market is a really small specialized market. on edit: to forestall anyone suggesting I think Amazon has a small market, no, just the Stallman quote doesn't take into account that monopoly can arise in a relatively small market that people would not consider worth nationalizing.

true, as I remember from last year's crises, there is only one wood mill in the world that does a very specific kind of pulp used by 3M to make those notorious masks. I wouldn't nationalize that.
Post reply on HN