Report: Amazon Used Sales Data to Duplicate Popular Products and Box Out Retailers

Reuters has uncovered damning proof in regards to the extent to which Amazon has systematically deliberate to tear off its third-party sellers in India—to the extent that it’s just about unimaginable for the corporate to maintain up a years-long charade.

According to paperwork obtained by the outlet, Amazon’s India department employed an in depth marketing campaign to gather non-public information about gross sales, use the identical end-stage producers to exactly replicate merchandise, and increase their very own competing manufacturers in search outcomes.

Reuters claims that two senior executives of Amazon’s worldwide enterprise evaluated the plan.

It vindicates years of reviews and complaints from staff and smaller companies that the corporate has taken data from captive retailers and used it in opposition to them. Reuters reviews that, in an inner 2016 doc, Amazon actually described its plan to advertise its India-based family provide model Solimo as: “use information from Amazon.in to develop products and then leverage the Amazon.in platform to market these products to our customers.”

According to Reuters, the 2016 paperwork present that Amazon offered Solimo merchandise at a ten% to fifteen% lower cost than its rivals. Documents additionally confirmed that they’d meant to make use of the identical producers as third-party sellers to create their imitation merchandise, even replicating the measurements of shirts by John Miller, a well-liked model in India. They’d then deliberate to checklist their merchandise second or third in search outcomes.

The firm has denied associated reviews that it collected data about different manufacturers’ gross sales with the intention to promote their knock-offs. Jeff Bezos claimed in a Congressional antitrust listening to final yr—the corporate’s most worthwhile ever—that he “can’t guarantee” that the corporate by no means violated its coverage in opposition to utilizing vendor information to hawk their very own competing manufacturers. The firm is presently dealing with an antitrust probe in India, including to investigations in Europe and the US.

Last yr, the corporate was fined $888 million for allegedly violating EU information safety laws, virtually pocket change for a corporation that pulled in $386 billion in income in 2020.

In February, Reuters reported that over 400,000 third-party India-based sellers listed their merchandise on Amazon. As of March 2021, the e-commerce information agency Marketplace Pulse reported that Amazon’s India market was rising 3 times as shortly as that of North America.

Amazon has not responded to Gizmodo’s request for remark, we’ll replace this publish after they do.