The European Commission has accused Amazon.com of abusing its dominant position by using sales data from third-party sellers on its e-commerce marketplace to enhance its own retail sales. The Commission also opened a second antitrust investigation into whether Amazon's business practices favour its own products and those of sellers that use its logistics and delivery services.
The formal statement of objections sent to Amazon outlining the first charges follows the Commission opening an investigation in July 2019. It's concerned the company has a conflict of interest, as it serves both as a platform provider and as a seller on that platform. "With e-commerce booming, and Amazon being the leading e-commerce platform, a fair and undistorted access to consumers online is important for all sellers," said the EU's competitor commissioner Margrethe Vestager in a statement.
As a marketplace provider, Amazon has access to non-public business data of third-party sellers on its site, such as the number of ordered and shipped units of products, the sellers' revenues on the marketplace, the number of visits to sellers' offers, data relating to shipping, to sellers' past performance, and other consumer claims on products, including the activated guarantees.
The Commission's preliminary findings show that "very large quantities" of this seller data are available to employees of Amazon's retail business and flow directly into the automated systems of that business. They aggregate the data and use it to calibrate Amazon's retail offers and strategic business decisions, "to the detriment of the other marketplace sellers", the Commission said. This could be considered an abuse of its its dominance in the market for marketplace services in France and Germany, the biggest markets for Amazon in the EU.
Access to buy box, Prime members
The second investigation focuses on the so-called 'buy box', a prominent place on the Amazon site for which sellers can bid. This spot inevitably leads to a very high share of sales in the product category. The Commission also is concerned about how Amazon allows other sellers to target members of its Prime loyalty programme, which is another way to boost sales.
The investigation will look at whether the criteria that Amazon sets to select the winner of the buy box and to enable sellers to offer products to Prime users favour Amazon's own retail business or the sellers that use Amazon's logistics and delivery services. If Amazon or certain sellers receive preferential treatment, this could also constitute an abuse of the company's dominant position.
The investigation covers all of the EU apart from Italy, where the competition regulator earlier started its own probe. The European Commission said it would coordinate with the Italian authorities on the investigations.
