Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#251

Post by kyrra » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

sh1ps wrote: post #160

Up front disclaimer: this is my own personal conspiracy theory with no objective proof. I have quite a few pieces of anecdotal evidence to support this, but anecdotal is anecdotal. Looking through the comments, everyone is talking about Amazon.com purchases, but the much quieter, arguably more valuable move on Amazon's part would be to do this via AWS. If you're running your entire system on AWS, Amazon immediately k…

Walmart was pushing its vendors (3 years ago) to not host on AWS.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/21/wal-mart-is-reportedly-telli...

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#252

Post by TLightful » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

dd36 wrote: post #161

thoraway1010 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally false - the number of retailers who have testified before congress that they don't use seller data to compete against sellers - and then who go ahead and do just that is basically zero. Additionally, most other retailers actually BUY the third parties products and take the risk of promoting and selling it. On Amazon third parties take the inventory and many other risks and may have to pay amazon to pr…

How would Amazon not use sales data of comparable products to evaluate the launch of a new white label product?

By breaking up Amazon.

This whole issue stinks of monopoly.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#253

Post by perfectstorm » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

isn't this what Costco, Walmart are doing? I thought this is pretty common in the retail world - i.e to cut out the middle man and price it just below the name brand so people buy the store brand because it's cheaper.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#254

Post by stormdennis » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #17

Stating the obvious I guess. All retailers do this and create their own white-label brands to squeeze profit from well-performing categories. Target, for instance, is very upfront about it and they have like a gazillion white-label brands that compete in hundreds of categories, which makes it very gray for the customer. Does anyone really think that any retailer launches a competing product in a category without look…

Maybe they do but that doesn't make it right. It's predatory.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#255

Post by akira2501 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #23

I’m not an Amazon fan boy, but I am a Costco fan boy, and they do the same thing, so I don’t really think I can be too upset about this. Retail is ruthless.

> but I am a Costco fan boy, and they do the same thing

Are you sure? My understand was the Kirkland is mostly just a re-badge for already existing manufacturers.. Kirkland usually buys up their "B" stock/bin of items and just rebrands them.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#256

Post by neonate » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

https://archive.md/7cdD3

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#257

Post by dang » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

thoraway1010 wrote: post #217

t0mas88 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also ethically fair game to base your decisions to launch a product on the amount of consumer interest the category gets. Everyone does that. What they promise not to do is take a look at seller specific data. That makes sense because it won't get them much extra compared to looking at categories, and the sellers ethically claim it's their data.

Actually - as the article described, they DO spend a lot of time looking at SPECIFIC seller data for unique products because it gives them LOTS extra that category details don't provide.

Could you please stop using allcaps like this? This is in the site guidelines: Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#258

Post by aksx » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

glitcher wrote: post #224

sharkweek wrote: post #23

I’m not an Amazon fan boy, but I am a Costco fan boy, and they do the same thing, so I don’t really think I can be too upset about this. Retail is ruthless.

> they do the same thing So I can sell my small company's products through Costco's web platform without Costco ever directly purchasing my product?

So costco pays a small companies to sell their product and extract sales data.

Should amazon start paying small companies at the same margin that costco does?

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#259

Post by awad » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

A point that I have not seen mentioned while skimming through the comments is that the relationships between traditional retailers and their brands is one of buyer wholesaler (in simple terms, I understand there are complexities here) and that in itself is different from Amazon Marketplace (as compared to sold by Amazon.com).

Re: Amazon scooped up data from its own sellers to launch competing products

#260

Post by TimSchumann » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #221

grafporno wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the hyper-specific dementi? Doesn't tap data from _individual_ third-party merchants.

No specific merchants... It's just from the aggregate data from third-party merchants. And I bet that data is "anonymized" too.

And you would win that bet.