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

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

#331

Post by econcon »

sacks2k wrote: post #171

I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof. I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks. I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. W…

Same happens to us but we split sales to Shopify. Any idea if Shopify does same? It seems their ambitions keeps growing, they started charging percentage of revenue instead of flat subscription.

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

#332

Post by TimSchumann »

joyj2nd wrote: post #307
sacks2k wrote: post #171

I saw this happening a decade ago, but I had no real proof. I had a profitable Amazon store in 2010. I found niche products that Amazon didn't sell. As soon as I started getting traction on any one product, Amazon would start undercutting me, and my sales would drop to almost zero over the course of a couple of weeks. I had near 100% feedback and I had a single customer complaint that I sold them the wrong product. W…

I had a few bad experiences with Amazon. 1st I got an item from a fraudulent 3rd party shipper. Did not get my money back and amazon claimed they don't know his identity 2nd Packet got stolen. Amazon claimed based on statistical analysis this packet is assumed to have reached me. Delivered to "mailbox". Paid with CC, made a charge back, closed my account. You know what is a pretty good competitor? eBay. As a business…

> You know what is a pretty good competitor?

Competitor on what vector? Speaking from a US-centric viewpoint here, but my thoughts;

* Distribution & Warehousing - Walmart & Costco

* Sales & Advertising - Google & Facebook

A few notable online storefronts that are independent and I use frequently are B&H Photovideo and Newegg. Realistically though the options I listed above are the only companies I see having the scale to compete with Amazon at anything, and even then they're an order of magnitude behind. Just my opinion, again very US-centric.

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

#333

Post by animalCrax0rz »

Given Amazon's willingness to spy on their business customers (traffic data in this case), should I be worried to deploy code on AWS that has high IP value in source code form (JS, Python, etc) or bytecode (Java/C#, which can be easily decompiled). I ask this because I noticed on AWS EC2 the default behavior is that Amazon produces the private/public key pair (as opposed to having the user add their SSH public key) so if they wish, they can access any code I deploy. Let's say I make a product on AWS that competes with a current or future product of AWS itself, and let's say it gets a ton of traffic, should I be worried? Should I be using only native binaries? (C/C++, Go, Rust, etc) ??

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

#335

Post by fma »

nateburke wrote: post #266

About 10 years ago I met the head of IT for B&H cameras in NYC. Among many things, he was in charge of the hosting for their online store. After he complained about dealing with physical servers, I asked him if he had ever considered using AWS ec2 for the website, and he replied that his boss refused because he believed that Amazon would pull data on B&H products and use it to compete more effectively. I'm not sure t…

Wonder if they are on Microsoft's Azure now?

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

#336

Post by rahul003 »

entee wrote: post #324
CodeCube wrote: post #290

So many comments about, "doesn't everyone know they do this?", and "everyone does this!" I say there should be an explicit difference between "running a platform", and "selling on a platform", and never should the two meet. By "platform" here, and in the context of selling stuff online or IRL, I mainly mean that the store should never compete with their suppliers ... it's madness and unethical. If everyone can get a…

The major question I don’t have a good answer to is, “Why is this different than brick and mortar store brands like Safeway signature?” Surely a part of is is placement, but Safeway could put own brand ketchup at the same level (and I think sometimes does) as Heinz and still wouldn’t sell the same volume. Amazon is clearly getting a big advantage here, I’m just curious about what the underlying dynamics are that allo…

Does it mean that the brand of Amazon is better than the likes of Safeway or Target who sell their own products to compete with more name brand ones? Or it could also be that the brands on Amazon such as the top voted comment here might be smaller brands without enough name recognition to gain the attention of a buyer.

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

#337

Post by econcon »

As someone who sells on Amazon India, we made huge money on Amazon India.

Our process is rather simple.

Buy 100 units of some new promising product from Alibaba, list it on Amazon. Work on our marketing copy.

If it sells well, optimize packaging and sales copy, increase price and order 1000 units.

Then rise and repeat.

You'll be suprized how low is the competition on Amazon India and how high is the volume.

It seems local sellers are clueless for now.

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

#338

Post by pge »

entee wrote: post #324
CodeCube wrote: post #290

So many comments about, "doesn't everyone know they do this?", and "everyone does this!" I say there should be an explicit difference between "running a platform", and "selling on a platform", and never should the two meet. By "platform" here, and in the context of selling stuff online or IRL, I mainly mean that the store should never compete with their suppliers ... it's madness and unethical. If everyone can get a…

The major question I don’t have a good answer to is, “Why is this different than brick and mortar store brands like Safeway signature?” Surely a part of is is placement, but Safeway could put own brand ketchup at the same level (and I think sometimes does) as Heinz and still wouldn’t sell the same volume. Amazon is clearly getting a big advantage here, I’m just curious about what the underlying dynamics are that allo…

I have wondered the same thing every time this question comes up. It seems the difference is that the companies that put products in grocery stores are very large companies that spend a huge amount on marketing themselves (e.g. P&G, General Mills). So, the "house brand" is less recognizable to consumers and sells at a discount to the known brand that is often a larger company than the grocery chain. The grocery stores need the name brands because shoppers come looking for them (and Safeway gets the benefit of all the marketing they do). In Amazon's case, they are serving as a distribution channel for many, many small brands, none of which are known as well as Amazon (whereas Kellogg's cereal is better known than Safeway). That changes the power dynamic in favor of Amazon.

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

#339

Post by sneak »

spaced-out wrote: post #236
munificent wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of competition drives prices up too. Once there is only one paper towel manufacturer left, what is to prevent it from raising prices?

At that point it would be an actual monopoly, and we can break that company up.

There’s no evidence that that mechanism is effective any longer. The United States regulators seem to be entirely content with fake not-monopolies (eg ISPs) lying about how much competition they have, and let monopolies or duopolies fleece millions for essential services or products as long as they spend the requisite amount of kickback via lobbying.

Admittedly those are public utilities but the attitude seems to hold true in antitrust as well. Walmart is probably the best example there, or now Amazon as evidenced by TFA.

Sometimes I wonder why Walmart and Comcast are allowed to behave this way while T-Mobile is not. (EDIT: Google says “nevermind”: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/technology/sprint-t-mobil...)

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

#340

Post by darkerside »

CodeCube wrote: post #290

So many comments about, "doesn't everyone know they do this?", and "everyone does this!" I say there should be an explicit difference between "running a platform", and "selling on a platform", and never should the two meet. By "platform" here, and in the context of selling stuff online or IRL, I mainly mean that the store should never compete with their suppliers ... it's madness and unethical. If everyone can get a…

Such a difficult thing to regulate. The instant you stop Amazon from selling on its own platform, they will open a subsidiary Amazon Retail, which is a favored customer on their platform. Whatever new regulation you can come up with, there will be armies of corporate lawyers ready to satisfy your requirements while still capturing that audience who is ready (and wants) to be captured by a platform-branded generic option.
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