Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by raisedbyninjas » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

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…

When Costco sells Kirkland brand vodka and Grey Goose, all bottles of Grey Goose are sold the same way. Costco purchases directly or from a distributor. Grey Goose may or may not pay for shelf space, IDK. Purchasing premium shelf space is a common practice for other retailers and grocers. When Grey Goose is sold on Amazon, either Amazon buys it and re-sells it or Grey Goose sells it through a marketplace account incurring Amazon's marketplace fees. So Amazon can always have two listings for one product, a marketplace listing and an Amazon listing. Their Amazon listing can always be cheaper.

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

#282

Post by Y-bar » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

zachware wrote: post #220

Y-bar wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to stuff shelves at a grocery chain ~20 years ago and one difference seldom mentioned is that grocery chains bought from the manufacturers. That meant that we as a grocery chain were responsible for the sale to consumer, we were not merely a marketplace for a bunch of different brands. So, even if we had our own competing labels for some products, the manufacturers would never be left in the cold with unsold s…

This is generally not how grocery operates today. Most large grocers: - Sell shelf location slots to the highest bidder. - Include a consignment clause in their vendor agreements requiring vendors to take back spoiled, customer-damaged, and unsold inventory at X point or on-demand. - Require merchandisers to keep inventory in-stock for as many products as they can get vendors to manage (e.g. the coke delivery person…

Are you maybe describing US practices? Some of these practices has been prohibited for a decade in EU and it was recently broadened to include agricultural and perishable products: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

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

#283

Post by dec0dedab0de » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

awillen wrote: post #279

codemac wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple, Costco actually buys the inventory, and resells it. There are more advanced kinds of agreements (like buy back X number of coats of you sell less than Y) but that's largely how they operate. Amazon is much more like a digital mall in that they rent out their store features for sellers. However, Amazon would like to be seen by the customer as Costco and this causes dissonance between how they treat seller…

Okay, you've described the business models, but so what? In both cases, they still use the sales data available to them to create and sell their own products at the expense of third party sellers. In Amazon's case, that means diverting customers away from third party listings to their own. In Costco's case, that means making fewer purchases from third party sellers because the amount of shelf space available decrease…

In both cases, they still use the sales data available to them to create and sell their own products at the expense of third party sellers.

Costco doesn't have any third party sellers. Costco is the only seller.

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

#284

Post by arrosenberg » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:25 PM UTC

awillen wrote: post #279

codemac wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple, Costco actually buys the inventory, and resells it. There are more advanced kinds of agreements (like buy back X number of coats of you sell less than Y) but that's largely how they operate. Amazon is much more like a digital mall in that they rent out their store features for sellers. However, Amazon would like to be seen by the customer as Costco and this causes dissonance between how they treat seller…

Okay, you've described the business models, but so what? In both cases, they still use the sales data available to them to create and sell their own products at the expense of third party sellers. In Amazon's case, that means diverting customers away from third party listings to their own. In Costco's case, that means making fewer purchases from third party sellers because the amount of shelf space available decrease…

Yes, but the terms of the relationship make Amazon's behavior anti-competitive. Costco isn't going to various brands and asking them to sell at Costco, they buy inventory and resell it at a profit. Amazon has convinced a large portion of the retail market to feudalize themselves on Amazon's platform, then they are using the data accrued to take over the markets of their current and former tenants.

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

#285

Post by rossjudson » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

awillen wrote: post #255

legutierr wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explanation makes the most sense to me, but there is something that you are leaving out. Not only is Amazon a marketplace, but it is THE marketplace. Amazon has an effective monopoly on small-seller logistics and marketplace services in the United States (and many other places), soup-to-nuts. If you are anything other than a massive corporation, any manufacturer that chooses not to sell through Amazon and utiliz…

This just isn't really true. It depends on what type of product you're selling, but there are a huge number of independent ecommerce stores that do extremely well. I sell dog treat mix (coopersdogtreats.com) - I do much better both in terms of margins and overall sales on my own website (with traffic coming primarily via paid FB ads) than on Amazon. That's not even including other huge marketplaces like walmart.com,…

I'm curious about how you would compare Amazon vs your own site. Things like Amazon's buyer-friendly return policy comes to mind...which clearly come at a cost for sellers (and buyers, fairly directly).

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

#286

Post by NovemberWhiskey » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

OldHand2018 wrote: post #164

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is at the level of a conspiracy theory right now, and one that doesn't even make any sense. If it were true that Amazon were taking sneaky peeks at data inside AWS related to retailers, and this became public, AWS as a business would be done. The loud banging you'd be hearing would be the door closing as the last customer exited, followed by all the engineering staff who work on AWS as they see the writing on th…

There is no need for a conspiracy theory. The metadata that is _required_ to produce your monthly AWS bill reveals a ton of information about the success of your business and what is doing very well for you. Doing analytics on customer billing is something that Amazon has every reason to be doing, and what Amazon does with that information can be anticompetitive or not.

At a certain level of aggregation, metadata is AWS need-to-know for capacity planning etc or for account execs to understand the needs of their covered clients.

There's definitely room for discussion over when what level of granularity is necessary and whether metadata at different levels of granularity should be shared with product vs. customer facing teams.

That didn't seem to be what the GP comment was about though - 'mining data from AWS servers' sounded to me like a much more invasive approach to client data.

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

#287

Post by president » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:31 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #257

Isn't it sad that all our tech giants are guilty of anti-competitive behavior? You know, things that are supposedly illegal and should have been stopped by government regulators long ago? It makes me wonder if these American businesses are really so different from the likes of Tencent, Huawei, etc and their ties to the Chinese government. Everyone knows those companies are only as big as they are because of governmen…

They are getting there. Don't forget censorship and silencing unfavorable political speech.

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

#288

Post by josefx » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

edoceo wrote: post #166

Loughla wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it the workers who (whom? I never know) pay the payroll tax? That's their money, in exchange for their time spent on work, that's not Amazon's money. This doesn't make sense to me.

in USA it works like: pay is $100. then take home is $80 because $20 is taken out for various payroll taxes. then also the company pays $20 for their portion. employees only see the -20 from them, not the +20 from Company on wage stubs. also, if the company has profits there is some tax on that (well, my little C-corp did) (numbers are made up to show process)

> also, if the company has profits there is some tax on that (well, my little C-corp did)

No large US company has any profits, maybe one of their child companies in Ireland or the Caribic does. They have to beg for billions in government handouts every time they want expand their operations, that is how bad they have it financially.

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

#289

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

awillen wrote: post #279

codemac wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple, Costco actually buys the inventory, and resells it. There are more advanced kinds of agreements (like buy back X number of coats of you sell less than Y) but that's largely how they operate. Amazon is much more like a digital mall in that they rent out their store features for sellers. However, Amazon would like to be seen by the customer as Costco and this causes dissonance between how they treat seller…

Okay, you've described the business models, but so what? In both cases, they still use the sales data available to them to create and sell their own products at the expense of third party sellers. In Amazon's case, that means diverting customers away from third party listings to their own. In Costco's case, that means making fewer purchases from third party sellers because the amount of shelf space available decrease…

>"Okay, you've described the business models, but so what?"

That the defining feature mate!

Getting paid an extra to provide premium service to a customer is normal in some areas, but it's a crime of you hold public office.

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

#290

Post by cwyers » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

awillen wrote: post #279

codemac wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple, Costco actually buys the inventory, and resells it. There are more advanced kinds of agreements (like buy back X number of coats of you sell less than Y) but that's largely how they operate. Amazon is much more like a digital mall in that they rent out their store features for sellers. However, Amazon would like to be seen by the customer as Costco and this causes dissonance between how they treat seller…

Okay, you've described the business models, but so what? In both cases, they still use the sales data available to them to create and sell their own products at the expense of third party sellers. In Amazon's case, that means diverting customers away from third party listings to their own. In Costco's case, that means making fewer purchases from third party sellers because the amount of shelf space available decrease…

In the Costco model, Costco pays up front for the vodka and incurs all the risk if the vodka doesn't sell. In the Amazon model, Amazon charges third-party sellers "rent" to be on the platform in the form of a cut of all transactions, but the third-party sellers still incur all risk for inventory that doesn't sell. And then Amazon turns around and uses the sales data from the third-party sellers to undercut them later on.