Amazon Watchers Say the Company Has Accelerated Its Efforts To Sell Its Own Products -- and That's Worrying Regulators Around the World (businessinsider.com)

By selling more products of its own, Amazon is becoming a competitor to the outside manufacturers it hosts on its platform -- and that's worrying regulators around the world. From a report: Governments have rarely tried to rein in Amazon's ambitions, allowing it to avoid most of the recent scrutiny directed at other large tech platforms. But the increased focus on Amazon's house-brand offerings suggests it may now be Amazon's turn. Driving the news: Amazon built a robust business as a participant in its own marketplace when it saw growth stall in stateside e-commerce, which is why holiday shoppers might have seen Amazon-owned brands like Happy Belly for food or Solimo for household goods when they browsed the site last year. It created more "private label" products, from its AmazonBasics line to brands for fashion and furniture, that are in-house versions of things others sell on the site. It struck deals with outside manufacturers to sell their products exclusively. Critics say Amazon uses its sales data to find fruitful areas where it can produce generic versions of already-popular products.

Comments

Re:How is this different...

[Registered Coward v2]

...from house/white brands that you find in supermarkets and stores around the world?

Say, Kirkland cashews and batteries, Win-Dixie bread and cleaning wipes, Kennmore appliances. And many more brands in europe, from retailers as diverse as Carrefour, aldi and "El corte ingles"

All big retail chains have white/house brands that compete with all the other brands. And all retailers use their retail/POS data to know what items move and which one would benefit them most if they decided to enter with a white brand...

So? what's different in this case?

It's the depth and breadth of Amazon data that's different. Not only does it have sales data it can parse to determone what to sell it also can get a pretty good idea of price is for the item as well as the demand easticity to set price to get the most profit. They also know what others charge and sales numbers and can move their prices accordingly. Finally, they also can look at the consumer buying habits to price discriminate. All of that is not avaiable to those on the marketplace, as far as I know. Sellers could follow Amazon's lead but smaller ones may not be able to match Amazon and stay in business.