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Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

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

#261

Post by 8note »

eropple wrote: post #234
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.

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.

That doesn't sound aligned with the California case yesterday?

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

#262

Post by wrboyce »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #173
alias_neo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more than a little disturbed by that response, can you back that bold accusation up with some references? I _need_ to read more about this (about to begin a migration to AWS, not retail though).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19734261 https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/ovh-ceo-unlike-amazo... https://sellercentral.amazon.com/forums/t/amazon-literally-s... https://fortune.com/2016/04/20/amazon-copies-merchants/ https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/9/19/20874818/amazon-allb... I can't find the most recent set of posts about peering into customer's AWS instances to research what they could copy but con…

Am I missing something or do none of these links even mention AWS?

I’m also unsure how the explicit trust from the government (“consider that govcloud exists”) is somehow evidence for their untrustworthiness?

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

#263

Post by ls612 »

_up wrote: post #212
notyourwork wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I'm not a legal expert, just an engineer with my own opinions. I struggle with it as well because conceptually in my mind this is the same as a grocery store using customer buying data to inform itself. Grocery chains have been using private label brands to compete with name brands for years. Check your cereal aisle for the "fruit loops" in the back without a box that are ~50% cheaper than the name brand…

I am not from the US but I think Amazon has much more market dominance than Costco. If Amazon had 20% market share nobody would mind, but they don't have real competition that comes close.

Amazon has less than 20% market share in retail overall. Remember their competitors are not just the online sellers who are pushing this antitrust angle. It’s Walmart and Target and grocery chains and CVS and Walgreens and brick and mortar department stores and so on.

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

#264

Post by LanceH »

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.

Costco buys products and resells them. Costco's research numbers are paid for entirely by Costco.

Amazon rents space to merchants where those items are sold through the site for a fee. Amazon is never on the hook for a sale and is basically getting paid to do the market research to set up as a competitor.

Yes, Costco does do some referral sales but I can't think of anything which has gone on to be a Kirkland product.

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

#265

Post by 8note »

tremon wrote: post #90
suprfsat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Bezos will testify in front of congress that he will cease to be innovative if required to pay taxes.

Does this imply he sees his ability to evade taxes as his only worthwhile innovation?

I think it implies that amazon can't both spend everything that would be profit on innovation while also paying the same money on taxes

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

#266

Post by BlueTemplar »

TheCapn wrote: post #238
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 su…

Yeah, as another perhaps anecdotal example, I've recently been forced to buy a book from Amazon because I literally couldn't find it anywhere else.

Despite the book being listed as "New", I received a book that was not only pretty old, but also had clearly been stolen from a library, with stamp marks and everything.

I'm not going to leave this alone, contacting the library and exposing this fraud is going to go pretty high on my pile of "to do" things...

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

#267

Post by jquaint »

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.

I think its a matter of scale. Say Costco makes a Kirkland brand cereal, there are other stores that you can buy cereal at and there is competition. For a lot people, all online shopping comes from Amazon. Amazon uses this position to their advantage in many ways (high quality customer data, branding, etc.). This actually disincentives people from making compelling products because of the risk that Amazon will just steal the product.

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

#268

Post by 411111111111111 »

awillen wrote: post #258
cgriswald wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the wrong mental model. Amazon isn’t Costco. Amazon is a shopping mall that has access to its tenants’ sales information and also owns an anchor store in the same mall. Costco can determine that Best Brand shoes sell in its stores and decide to source shoes themselves and stop carrying Best Brand. Amazon can determine that the Footlocker in their mall is making a killing selling Best Brand shoes and either s…

This explanation doesn't explain the difference to me at all. Costco can see that vodka sells well, so they can make Kirkland brand vodka. They control the layout of the store, so they can change the layout so people see Kirkland brand first when they get to the liquor section. They know the pricing of other vodkas and which ones sell well, so they can source Kirkland vodka at an ideal price point. None of what you'v…

I think the only difference is that Amazon is a digital marketplace, so they can and do let their users pioneer what gets sold.

Space is at a premium with a physical location, so the likelihood of an actual store exploiting that is extremely unlikely

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

#269

Post by kdmdmdmmdmd »

ch4s3 wrote: post #94
varispeed wrote: post #72

Amazon should be split into separate independent companies - logistics, AWS, marketplace and whatever else they do now. We need laws that will limit growth of companies to become too big to fail and have all the money to buy laws, destroy competition and in general do as they please without consequences. It's a loophole in capitalism that has to be closed. Big businesses should follow the same rules as your mom and p…

> too big to fail How is Amazon "too big to fail" in your opinion? That phrase "I think they're too large", it means that a business is so central to the functioning on the broader economy and to several other industries that their failure would tank the whole economy. Think Boeing or JP Morgan Chase Bank. > and have all the money to buy laws, What exact laws has Amazon bought?

Too big to fail is when we have explicit admission of fraud inside a company and a bunch of people, who are likely shareholders, are lining up to excuse them and compare them to supermarkets.

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

#270

Post by criddell »

cgriswald wrote: post #241
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.

You have the wrong mental model. Amazon isn’t Costco. Amazon is a shopping mall that has access to its tenants’ sales information and also owns an anchor store in the same mall. Costco can determine that Best Brand shoes sell in its stores and decide to source shoes themselves and stop carrying Best Brand. Amazon can determine that the Footlocker in their mall is making a killing selling Best Brand shoes and either s…

Maybe Costco is different, but at a lot of stores the line is blurrier. You might be able to get your product on store shelves, but if you want good placement, you basically have to rent that shelf space.
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