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>Splitting out GMV is important because Amazon isn’t setting the price or choosing the selection for the third party Marketplace Well. In some cases, Amazon wi

• throwawaysea 7y ago
  That seems too narrow a definition for me. I order things expecting two day Prime shipping all the time but almost none are so urgent that waiting isn’t an option. For me it is simply a competitive advantage against other slower delivery options but also physical stores, because that requires the inconvenience and time expenditure of driving and walking through the store. That is, I feel the market they’re in (ignoring AWS etc) is general retailing.
  • ikeboy 7y ago
    There's a substantial portion of their customer base that would not consider other sites that took longer to ship. I'm not claiming everyone is like that but it's a relevant market.
    • sokoloff 7y ago
      There’s a substantial portion of Ford’s customer base who would never consider buying a Chevy (and vice versa). Nevertheless, we consider GM as a competitor to Ford when determining whether or not Ford is a monopoly.
      • ikeboy 7y ago
        Those do roughly the same thing. I don't believe a subscription service that gives you no marginal cost 1-2 day shipping is comparable to anything offered by retailers without a two day shipping option.
        • sokoloff 7y ago
          That’s a position I understand but do not hold. I regularly cross-shop Amazon with EBay, NewEgg, B&H, random online shops I never heard of until Google found them, and even AliExpress. With most things I order on Monday, whether they arrive Wednesday or Friday makes no practical difference to me. I either want it Monday or kind of don’t care typically.
          • ikeboy 7y ago
            Data point: do you pay for prime?
            • sokoloff 7y ago
              Yes. Even with Prime, I frequently buy away from Amazon.
• ineedasername 7y ago
  I fail to see how third pary sellers, of which Amazon take a cut, are significantly different that suppliers if traditional retail outlets. The primary difference is less risk for Amazon, but otherwise they seem to have a very similar relationship of traditional retail <-> supplier. Not the same, no, but similar enough not to split hairs on the topic when discussing Amazon's market influence.
  • ikeboy 7y ago
    Agreed. Recently Amazon stopped showing addresses to sellers for FBA orders. If you don't even know who your customer is, it's hard to argue you are the retailer.
    • brianwawok 7y ago
      Emails and phones have been gone a while. Essentially all you get is a generic amazon hosted forwarding email address if you want to talk to your customers.
      • ikeboy 7y ago
        Yeah, it's the physical addresses that were removed recently. Phones were removed about two years ago if I recall correctly.
        • brianwawok 7y ago
          Phone removal happened in waves. The most recent wave was about 6 months ago. Fba phone numbers went to amazon owned phone numbers with giant extensions
          • ikeboy 7y ago
            Iirc, FBA phones hadn't been available for two years, it's MF phone numbers that got proxied to Amazon phone numbers six months back. Then 1-2 months ago FBA addresses vanished.
• asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  It feels like you're just defining the market as narrowly as needed to target Amazon. I mean you could add more arbitrary restricts to make it so Amazon appears to have a 100% market share. What's interesting is how much market power they have, not their share of randomly defined slices of the logistics and online retail market.
  • ikeboy 7y ago
    I think there's a substantial number of people who don't comparison shop because nobody else has a real prime competitor. When Amazon has a hundred million subscribers to a service to ship in two days, it's reasonable to ask whether that's a monopoly.
    • nordsieck 7y ago
      > I think there's a substantial number of people who don't comparison shop because nobody else has a real prime competitor. That's true of Costco as well. No one's trying to break them up.
      • sidlls 7y ago
        Sam's Club is at least one competitor to Costco.
        • reificator 7y ago
          That's not what they were saying.
          • sidlls 7y ago
            The comment is in response to one noting that people don't comparison shop because nobody else is a meaningful competitor for Prime. It doesn't make sense without the implication that Costco also has no meaningful competition.
      • ikeboy 7y ago