Produced | Houlang Research Group
Author 丨Zhuang Sihong
The picture | the figureworm creative
An Amazon seller advocacy group recently claimed that many sellers have received amazon's official "warning letters" stating that third-party platforms may be shut down after the U.S. Congress passes a bill regulating digital platform behavior.
The cross-border industry association Online Merchants Guild said that the recipients of the email at the beginning were mostly the top sellers who had worked with Amazon's public-policy team in the past, and then gradually expanded to almost all third-party sellers. This email encourages sellers to register as members of the internal website supportmallsellers.us to stay on top of legislative processes that may affect sellers' "life and death."
It is reported that the supportmallsellers.us requires sellers to provide an email address and an accurate address of business or residence and domicile address when registering, and indicate that "fill in the detailed address or will have the opportunity to have direct dialogue with members of Congress.". Amazon's move can be said to be extremely frightening, once the terminator of the traditional physical bookstore can sit on the top spot of the global e-commerce platform can not be separated from the third-party seller all the way to accompany, and now Amazon will not hesitate to lay down the "merit" of the mountains and rivers for itself all the way to the road to sell to politicians as a political chip, smell sad.
Amazon pointed out that in June, lawmakers from both parties proposed a set of legal bills, including prohibiting e-commerce platforms from using their advantages to suppress competitors, in order to snipe Amazon's self-operated series that has always "erode" third-party sellers' products.
Sarah Miller, executive director of the American anti-monopoly organization American Economic Liberties Project, said that Congress has been constantly acting against Amazon recently, on the one hand, because amazon's scandal of using the market monopoly position to suppress small and medium-sized sellers is raging, and Congress can no longer sit idly by and let it disrupt the market economy; on the other hand, Amazon's current market position has to make Congress jealous of three points, using political means to give it a "killing stick". It can also be said to be "small and happy".
Amazon has recently been kicked out of "copying" hot products on Indian sites and turned to Amazon's own business, "going through the back door" to push its own products to the top of the search; another survey by The Markup shows that Amazon's proud A10 algorithm has not hesitated to lead almost all of the display positions of the gold shopping cart (Buy Box) to Amazon's own operation; the U.S. Legislative Council has publicly accused Amazon of denying the above-mentioned revelations.
Amazon's scandal is nothing more than a small talk after a meal, and what sellers are most worried about is that one day in the future, Amazon's third-party seller platform will cease to exist like the Japanese Tsukiji market, without soil, how will the seeds take root and sprout?
Dharmesh Mehta, Vice President of Amazon, responded that if the bill is passed, sellers may not be able to sell again at Amazon. The purpose of releasing such a message to the outside world is to call on sellers to actively carry out "self-help behavior", and also hope that lawmakers can see the real ideas of sellers, that is, the group they say are squeezed by Amazon. The hype of the exposed content in the domestic and foreign media is just a gimmick, and it is quite one-sided.
The Connected Commerce Council blogged that the bills introduced by Congress, specifically the American Choice and Innovation Online Act, would force Amazon to stop selling its own products on the platform. The trade group commented that Amazon will either close its own section, which accounts for more than 40% of the platform business, or spin off the third-party seller Central business, no matter how it is chosen, it is a "broken arm to save its life".
House Member Ken Buck, on the other hand, is one of the co-sponsors of the bill, publicly accusing Amazon of inciting confrontation and alarmism. The bill aims to regulate Amazon's behavior as both an athlete and a referee, and Amazon will not face a binary choice if it complies with antitrust laws. Buck posted on Twitter that Amazon threatened sellers that once the antitrust amendment was passed, it would face deportation, which was simply a manifestation of shameless retaliation, pushing sellers to the cusp of opposing the passage of the bill, which was equivalent to putting sellers into more serious business risks. The heart is as fierce as Amazon, which can be seen.
A recent Amazon Small Business Empowerment Report showed that there were more than 500,000 third-party sellers on U.S. sites as of the end of August 2021. In 2018, third-party sellers accounted for 58% of all Amazon site sales. From the perspective of business contribution, third-party sellers have always been very important, assuming that third-party sellers are "expelled", then Amazon's huge FBA warehouse will be idle, and the inventory and diversity of platform goods will be eclipsed by the absence of third-party sellers, and it is obviously unlikely to shut down the third-party seller platform.
Paul Rafelson, executive director of the Online Merchants Guild, said Amazon was scrambling for "definition rights" to circumvent the law's shackles. Rafelson's claim that "we are not a platform, we are a store" completely subverts Amazon's previous foothold, that is, to play the role of a third-party platform to build a virtual store for sellers to collect commissions. Amazon's "sophistry" is intended to throw together a uniform collection of sales tax on sellers and the responsibility for the breakdown of goods.
A recent California ruling wrote that Amazon is liable for products sold on the platform, and that changes in online sales taxes have made it more difficult for Amazon to argue from a legal perspective.
However, the Online Merchants Guild gives another view, according to Amazon, the seller's position will be more limited. If Amazon really changes from a "platform" to a "store," it's a lot like Costco or Walmart, which has been on the shelves for a long time. If Amazon has the intention to let third-party sellers act as suppliers, OEM shelves self-operated stores, then it can completely get rid of the unfavorable public opinion of "fake public welfare and private interests", just like Wal-Mart, using the market advantage to reduce the purchase price as much as possible, exploiting the sellers' already meager profits, and the seller's background data is still very likely to be collected by Amazon for its own use. In general, the "fair surplus" between the two has not been corrected, but has grown wider and wider.
Coincidentally, Uber and Lyft are also using drivers to block guns when facing lawsuits, fighting for their strength to lobby for the company. Uber and Lyft's drivers were eventually coerced into supporting Proposition 22. A similar experience seems to be replicated on Amazon and third-party sellers.