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Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

theregister.com

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Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#41

Post by mcpackieh »

wbl wrote: post #36
andylynch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It strikes me as very similar to the ever present conflict of interest in the securities world between clients and broker-dealers. A business like Amazon’s retail one is quite like the latter, and I would be totally unsurprised to see more and more legislative pressure applied to force them to segregate if not choose between their ‘agency’ and ‘prop’-type franchises; especially outside the US. Stuff like the EU’s DMA…

We let supermarkets competitively position themselves all the time. Why is Amazon different?

There's a lot more healthy competition between grocery store brands than in e-commerce. If Amazon weren't so dominant then they wouldn't be the target of this kind of regulation.

Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#42

Post by bastawhiz »

fbdab103 wrote: post #35
gnicholas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including grocery stores?

I love this question. Supposedly, Walmart does a significant amount of profit from their house brand which is, inspired by their suppliers in a similar way to Amazon. As a Costco shopper, I am also quite likely to grab the Kirkland brand instead of the competitor.

Costco is maybe not the best example, because nearly every Kirkland product is a main name brand with a different name. It's almost never the case that Kirkland coffee (often made by Starbucks) is on the shelf next to an identical/equivalent coffee from, say, Folgers. Costco often only stocks one type of each product: they have Kirkland batteries (Duracell) but no Energizer (though they do sell other Duracell batteries at a higher cost).

Most supermarkets, on the other hand, work with manufacturers that aren't name brands, and almost exclusively sell their store brand alongside name brand products.

While I don't know what makes Amazon's practices different from what supermarkets do, my assumption is that placing two products adjacent on a shelf is very different then highlighting and promoting the store brand above and ahead of the competition. The store brand doesn't appear exclusively in recommendations or ads or come with a "Preferred" badge. The store also doesn't use sales data to decide which products to make a store brand for, with the goal of overtaking the name brand.

Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#43

Post by dantheman »

andyferris wrote: post #38
wbl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We let supermarkets competitively position themselves all the time. Why is Amazon different?

Well, actually, I think this is increasingly being highlighted as a problem. For example a few years ago in Australia it was a big issue that the supermarket duopoly was intentially making their brands of milk too cheap. There was a kind of spiral where expensive brands weren't selling well, so farmers had to sign restrictive contracts with the big supermarkets, but the rates were too low to be profitable or even via…

Did the price of milk get higher or did it just stay lower?

Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#44

Post by mcpackieh »

fbdab103 wrote: post #35
gnicholas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including grocery stores?

I love this question. Supposedly, Walmart does a significant amount of profit from their house brand which is, inspired by their suppliers in a similar way to Amazon. As a Costco shopper, I am also quite likely to grab the Kirkland brand instead of the competitor.

From what I understand most of those "house brand" products are made by the same factories of the on-brand stuff, probably but not necessarily with the same recipe and QC standards.

Product branding has almost no relationship to which company actually made the product, consumers are intentionally blinded to this information. I would appreciate regulation requiring products to be branded with the factory that made it; I think this would be a huge win for both consumers and workers but it would be firmly counter to the interests of major brands with a lot of political influence. Also many consumers would probably oppose this against their own rational interests because they have personal attachments to brands.

Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#45

Post by dantheman »

mcpackieh wrote: post #41
wbl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We let supermarkets competitively position themselves all the time. Why is Amazon different?

There's a lot more healthy competition between grocery store brands than in e-commerce. If Amazon weren't so dominant then they wouldn't be the target of this kind of regulation.

I'd say the cost of switching in real life is a lot more expensive than going to a different URL. Amazon is dominant because it fights to provide a good value to its customers. It's easy for them to type in a different URL.

Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#46

Post by dantheman »

EliRivers wrote: post #28
lotsofpulp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has never stopped anyone from putting up a website and shipping things to customers.

They certainly have stopped people doing it at prices cheaper than they sell through Amazon. They're running a protection racket.

Don't sell on Amazon if you want to sell at a lower price, it's not that hard.

Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#47

Post by lacksconfidence »

paulddraper wrote: post #39
Osiris wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same should go for internet. You can own the infrastructure or you can provide the service, but not both.

What do you mean by service? ISPs?

I don't know if this is what GP is getting at, but it reminds me of DSL unbundling. One company owns the wires, another company is the ISP.

Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#48

Post by avar »

andyferris wrote: post #38
wbl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We let supermarkets competitively position themselves all the time. Why is Amazon different?

Well, actually, I think this is increasingly being highlighted as a problem. For example a few years ago in Australia it was a big issue that the supermarket duopoly was intentially making their brands of milk too cheap. There was a kind of spiral where expensive brands weren't selling well, so farmers had to sign restrictive contracts with the big supermarkets, but the rates were too low to be profitable or even via…

I wasn't familiar with the Australian "Milk Wars", and went down a bit of a rabbit hole. This $1/liter pricing appears to have started on Australia Day in 2011, and continued until 2019.

But in this summary [1] of the report that Australia's competition regulator released in 2018 we can see that the price/liter that farmers were getting during this period doesn't seem to have been affected by the $1/liter pricing.

The ACCC found (quoting [1]): "no direct relationship between retail private label milk prices and farmgate prices", and that neither the rate at which farms closed down, or their profitability was affected by the $1/liter milk.

1. https://www.farminstitute.org.au/briefing-dairy-regulation-a...

2. https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/publications/dairy-inquiry-...

Re: Brits make Amazon, Meta stop using third-party data to undercut rivals

#50

Post by spacebanana7 »

edgyquant wrote: post #37
spacebanana7 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction between platform and product is much hazier in software compared to physical industries. For example, it’s taken for granted that most personal computing platforms have built in PDF viewers, but this wasn’t always the case and used to be a distinct product category (and still is to some extent). Similar for media players, some networking software, and spreadsheet apps. Should Cloudflare be allowed to…

This doesn’t appear to be a response to or at all related to ISPs either owning the infrastructure or selling the service. What exactly is your point about ISPs here?

The point is that boundary between service and infrastructure is gradual in the digital world but discrete in physical world.

A digital infrastructure provider must sell a level of servicing for their products to be useable.

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