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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

#411

Post by akira2501 »

arrozconcosas wrote: post #405
cmeacham98 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These comparisons to brick&mortar stores are mostly irrelevant. Amazon told 3rd party sellers it wouldn't use their sales data for its own sales (and possibly contractually agreed not to? - unsure here), and it now seems that they broke this promise. How other stores operate doesn't matter. Amazon said it wouldn't do this and used that trust to attract sellers and grow their platform.

Companies break contracts all the time. The consequences range and can include legal action, hurt relationships, lost business ... but also could be minor ('business is business').

> Companies break contracts all the time.

Which is an excellent reason for preventing these types of monopolies from forming in the first place. Once you let one retailer get so large, they have almost unlimited power to act in this way, but the people who they harm have very little power in receiving any recompense for it.

> The consequences range

They sure do.. and Amazon is one of the largest companies operating today. The range is "off-scale high."

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

#412

Post by Nasrudith »

theturtletalks wrote: post #408
lupire wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potayto, potahtoh. Failed enforcement attempts are as ineffective as non-attempted enforcement.

What's a law with no teeth?

It has teeth but high standards. It is a bit more like Treason charges in the US. Technically a capital crime but often not worth trying as the precedents make it a high fence to clear. You are better off finding some anticompetitive business practice to cease.

But anything about monopoly from the professional liars is just a bunch of table pounding as they lack laws and facts.

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

#413

Post by Nasrudith »

jasallen wrote: post #205
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.

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…

That sounds awfully like the Platform vs Publisher distinction "logic".

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

#414

Post by awillen »

dv_dt wrote: post #384
mountainb wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people kind of miss is that outside of FBA it's the actual logistics companies that are handling the logistics for all merchant fulfilled Amazon sales. The normal logistics companies are also handling a ton of the work involved with getting goods to FBA. There are lots of 3PL solutions that can deliver FBA style performance at a lower cost to the seller. There are other advantages to not using Amazon as a seller…

I've seen at least one other comment saying this, and not that I don't believe you, but can you name several companies that do that and come within say 150% of Amazon? Last time I really dug into this was years ago and nothing was really close then, maybe it's better now? My other question to comments : > What are the Amazon level logistics and delivery service that is available to a smaller retailer? I see some nasc…

I've priced out several and all are within 150%. Shipbob is the closest at 10-20% more expensive than FBA, but depending on your product it may actually be more cost effective. I need them to pick and pack several items, since I sell my stuff individually as well as in kits (boxes of multiple items, which are vastly more popular than people buying individual items), and they include most of the cost of building out those kits in their shipping fees.

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

#415

Post by Gibbon1 »

arrozconcosas wrote: post #405
cmeacham98 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These comparisons to brick&mortar stores are mostly irrelevant. Amazon told 3rd party sellers it wouldn't use their sales data for its own sales (and possibly contractually agreed not to? - unsure here), and it now seems that they broke this promise. How other stores operate doesn't matter. Amazon said it wouldn't do this and used that trust to attract sellers and grow their platform.

Companies break contracts all the time. The consequences range and can include legal action, hurt relationships, lost business ... but also could be minor ('business is business').

There is breaking contracts in minor often mutually agreed ways, or because 'can't do it'. Happens all the time.

Stealing your customers sales metrics, yeah that's never okay.

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

#417

Post by bhupy »

cowpig wrote: post #374
idiotsecant wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should walmart be able to produce and offer generic versions of brand name items on their shelves? Why or why not?

I don't think they're similar. There are many stores in my neighborhood, but there's only one google, only one app store on my phone, and only one Amazon. I also think the degree to which the platform can exploit data related to producers (and consumers) is totally different with online marketplaces.

You're correct that they're probably not similar, but they are different in ways that undercuts your original argument.

There are almost certainly more than one search engine (Bing, DuckDuckGo) and more than one online retail platform (Shopify, Walmart.com, eBay). But unlike physical businesses, they are literally "just a click away"; whereas in the real world, you'd have to schlep to the physical location of the competing store. Moreover, the barrier to entry to actually spinning up an online retail platform is much much lower than spinning up a brick-and-mortar location (permits, employed labor per location, rent/property costs). Finally, the theoretical reach once you spin up an online retail platform is infinite; whereas one has to go through all of the aforementioned brick-and-mortar barriers for every incremental customer in the world...

IMO, the concept of abolishing generic store brands strikes me as fundamentally hostile to the poor. The other day I was at a Walgreen's picking up some Neosporin ointment, and I found the Walgreen's store brand right next to at half the price. I'm privileged enough to be able to afford the name-brand Neosporin without having to think about it, but I fully appreciate that there are a lot of people that are grateful that the store brand exists. I'm sure Johnson & Johnson would love for the government to prevent Walgreen's from selling its cheaper store brand, but I'm skeptical that this would be good for anybody except Johnson & Johnson.

Likewise, Amazon provides "generic" versions of commodity products. Insofar as it's difficult to compete with Amazon, it's because it's generally difficult to run sustainable businesses solely on the back of commodity products.

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

#418

Post by Nasrudith »

gamblor956 wrote: post #399
fredophile wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Store brand products are not new and not the issue. Let's pretend that Costco didn't currently sell vodka at all. If Costco wants to know if they should start selling vodka or bottling their own vodka and selling that they don't have access to the sales data from the liquor store next door to Costco. Amazon is letting other businesses take the risks and using sales data from those businesses to outcompete them.

That's the right way to look at it, missing just one crucial detail. Costco pays for the items that appear on its shelves (excepting the Amazon gets paid by the distributors (aka third party sellers) on Amazon.com for handling their sales (even in instances where it is not handling fulfillment), while also competing against them. That is where the anticompetitive concerns arise. If Amazon just sold stuff through the…

Don't most large brick and mortar retailers maintain refund for unsold goods agreements in addition to defects? Generally only exercised if they are complete failures.

Effectively the difference in practice is a matter of financing and grain of operation - older retail would gain more and give no extra to upfront sales of say toliet paper after a demand spike raised prices while Amazon would give them a per sale percentage cut.

At what point does own involvement in consignment sales models become not fine? If it works at 1% consignment. Is it 25%? 50%? 75%? 90%? Or more likely it doesn't exist because the whole concept is a fabrication that pays no attention to real law and operates in the court of public opinion to push their bullshit which wouldn't even need a defendant motion before winding up dismissed by a judge because they cannot point to any real laws?

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

#419

Post by gsibble »

zizee wrote: post #416

Does this practice extend beyond retail? Do AWS product managers look at AWS usage data of their customers sass products to decide whether it's worth launching a competing service?

Usually if the answer could be evil, with Amazon it is. I'm sure GCP does the same.

Gotta love how AWS/GCP terminate your https and can read all of your api traffic.......

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

#420

Post by boomboomsubban »

ch4s3 wrote: post #153
boomboomsubban wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you think they are exploiting people? Yes, part of how they achieved this was by violating emissions standards for a decade, something that they've been fined for. I'd be willing to wager they engage in similar practices too. >I could keep listing examples of market leaders that offer better products that are more aligned with consumer preferences, Their existence alone won't convince me. You need to answer why t…

> violating emissions standards for a decade This began well after they entered the market and upset the dominance of established players. > You need to answer why the competition is unable to produce similar products at similar prices. The same way some people are better at given task. Many older firms are complacent, and operating on an understanding of the market as it existed in the past. Technology, consumer pre…

>This began well after they entered the market and upset the dominance of established players.

I still find it unlikely that it is an isolated incident, but that decade is also when they started to pass the mentioned 10%.

>But this is ultimately sophomoric economic thinking.

Your attempt to explain why the competition may be unable to compete is "they're just better." Beyond that, you just say smaller is better, which is the point of my argument.

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