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So basically, Amazon is not allowed to look at what products are selling well on Amazon before they decide which products to make. However, Amazon is still allo

So basically, Amazon is not allowed to look at what products are selling well on Amazon before they decide which products to make. However, Amazon is still allowed to sell products, and presumably market research firms are going to give them the same results, more or less. So what did this accomplish, really? It seems like some UK lawmaker is up for reelection and wants a feather in their cap.

m3047 3y ago
As the market makers they have data which is otherwise only available to the sellers themselves. If they have to buy market intelligence from third parties it won't be as good, plus those third parties now have intelligence about what intelligence Amazon is willing to pay for which I'm sure they can sell on to the highest bidder.
- rkagerer 3y ago
  Could the left hand sell said data to market research analysts first, before the right hand buys their reports?
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    The Five Eyes approach! Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and eBay could all share their customer data with each other.
  - avar 3y ago
    Well, yes, and that's not some circumvention of measures like this, but the intent of these sorts of anti-competitive laws. Amazon can use the same data they've been using all this time, but they must not put themselves in a special position in acquiring that data. If they want to publish their sales data for free or for a price that they themselves pay, that's fine, as long as others can also get the data.
    - Arelius 3y ago
      Wouldn't selling it, perhaps not be particularly fair. Like, couldn't they sell it at a price that would eat up all potential profits from the company using the data. But it'd be fine since they could run that segment of the company at a loss to bolster profits in other parts of the company?
      - andyferris 3y ago
        They'd have to sell the data to a third party, who would only be willing to pay market rates (they'd profit more from reselling that data to multiple parties). Colluding to increase the base rate would be a kind of price fixing (i.e. illegal) and having the third party increase the margin wouldn't benefit Amazon at all. EDIT: remember if the data is actually valuable, then Amazon could sell it for MORE than it costs to buy it back, since the third party can recoup its costs from multiple purchasers. (So the market mechnism helps make the data more accessible and broadly useful.)
  - pdpi 3y ago
    At that point, Amazon’s data will be up for sale for everybody else to buy too, which fixes the problem.
andylynch 3y ago
It strikes me as very similar to the ever present conflict of interest in the securities world between clients and broker-dealers. A business like Amazon’s retail one is quite like the latter, and I would be totally unsurprised to see more and more legislative pressure applied to force them to segregate if not choose between their ‘agency’ and ‘prop’-type franchises; especially outside the US. Stuff like the EU’s DMA are just first steps; in securities trading a lot of this stuff sails into criminal rather than civil law.
- wbl 3y ago
  We let supermarkets competitively position themselves all the time. Why is Amazon different?
  - andyferris 3y ago
    Well, actually, I think this is increasingly being highlighted as a problem. For example a few years ago in Australia it was a big issue that the supermarket duopoly was intentially making their brands of milk too cheap. There was a kind of spiral where expensive brands weren't selling well, so farmers had to sign restrictive contracts with the big supermarkets, but the rates were too low to be profitable or even viable. The conflict of interest sort of "broke" the free market for milk. I'm not sure if retailers should be forced to be "brokers or producers but not both" but I am sure that if they were purely "brokers" then we wouldn't have experienced this particular problem. (The fact that the supermaket business is so centralised is another related issue).
    - dantheman 3y ago
      Did the price of milk get higher or did it just stay lower?
    - avar 3y ago
      I wasn't familiar with the Australian "Milk Wars", and went down a bit of a rabbit hole. This $1/liter pricing appears to have started on Australia Day in 2011, and continued until 2019. But in this summary [1] of the report that Australia's competition regulator released in 2018 we can see that the price/liter that farmers were getting during this period doesn't seem to have been affected by the $1/liter pricing. The ACCC found (quoting [1]): "no direct relationship between retail private label milk prices and farmgate prices", and that neither the rate at which farms closed down, or their profitability was affected by the $1/liter milk. 1. https://www.farminstitute.org.au/briefing-dairy-regulation-and-floor-pricing/ https://www.farminstitute.org.au/briefing-dairy-regulation-a... 2. https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/publications/dairy-inquiry-final-report https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/publications/dairy-inquiry-...

m3047 3y ago

As the market makers they have data which is otherwise only available to the sellers themselves. If they have to buy market intelligence from third parties it won't be as good, plus those third parties now have intelligence about what intelligence Amazon is willing to pay for which I'm sure they can sell on to the highest bidder.

rkagerer 3y ago
Could the left hand sell said data to market research analysts first, before the right hand buys their reports?
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  The Five Eyes approach! Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and eBay could all share their customer data with each other.
- avar 3y ago
  Well, yes, and that's not some circumvention of measures like this, but the intent of these sorts of anti-competitive laws. Amazon can use the same data they've been using all this time, but they must not put themselves in a special position in acquiring that data. If they want to publish their sales data for free or for a price that they themselves pay, that's fine, as long as others can also get the data.
  - Arelius 3y ago
    Wouldn't selling it, perhaps not be particularly fair. Like, couldn't they sell it at a price that would eat up all potential profits from the company using the data. But it'd be fine since they could run that segment of the company at a loss to bolster profits in other parts of the company?
    - andyferris 3y ago
      They'd have to sell the data to a third party, who would only be willing to pay market rates (they'd profit more from reselling that data to multiple parties). Colluding to increase the base rate would be a kind of price fixing (i.e. illegal) and having the third party increase the margin wouldn't benefit Amazon at all. EDIT: remember if the data is actually valuable, then Amazon could sell it for MORE than it costs to buy it back, since the third party can recoup its costs from multiple purchasers. (So the market mechnism helps make the data more accessible and broadly useful.)
- pdpi 3y ago
  At that point, Amazon’s data will be up for sale for everybody else to buy too, which fixes the problem.

andylynch 3y ago

It strikes me as very similar to the ever present conflict of interest in the securities world between clients and broker-dealers. A business like Amazon’s retail one is quite like the latter, and I would be totally unsurprised to see more and more legislative pressure applied to force them to segregate if not choose between their ‘agency’ and ‘prop’-type franchises; especially outside the US. Stuff like the EU’s DMA are just first steps; in securities trading a lot of this stuff sails into criminal rather than civil law.

wbl 3y ago
We let supermarkets competitively position themselves all the time. Why is Amazon different?
- andyferris 3y ago
  Well, actually, I think this is increasingly being highlighted as a problem. For example a few years ago in Australia it was a big issue that the supermarket duopoly was intentially making their brands of milk too cheap. There was a kind of spiral where expensive brands weren't selling well, so farmers had to sign restrictive contracts with the big supermarkets, but the rates were too low to be profitable or even viable. The conflict of interest sort of "broke" the free market for milk. I'm not sure if retailers should be forced to be "brokers or producers but not both" but I am sure that if they were purely "brokers" then we wouldn't have experienced this particular problem. (The fact that the supermaket business is so centralised is another related issue).
  - dantheman 3y ago
    Did the price of milk get higher or did it just stay lower?
  - avar 3y ago
    I wasn't familiar with the Australian "Milk Wars", and went down a bit of a rabbit hole. This $1/liter pricing appears to have started on Australia Day in 2011, and continued until 2019. But in this summary [1] of the report that Australia's competition regulator released in 2018 we can see that the price/liter that farmers were getting during this period doesn't seem to have been affected by the $1/liter pricing. The ACCC found (quoting [1]): "no direct relationship between retail private label milk prices and farmgate prices", and that neither the rate at which farms closed down, or their profitability was affected by the $1/liter milk. 1. https://www.farminstitute.org.au/briefing-dairy-regulation-and-floor-pricing/ https://www.farminstitute.org.au/briefing-dairy-regulation-a... 2. https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/publications/dairy-inquiry-final-report https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/publications/dairy-inquiry-...