I think there's a lot of misunderstanding, though, on what constitutes abuse (and thus an anecdote for your assertion). Amazon openly mines third party sales data to bolster its in house brands, just as Costco does with Kirkland, Walmart with Parent's Choice, Trader Joe's does with their house brand, etc..
Amazon has a policy, as described in this article, of not allowing individual seller's data to be used in non-aggregated form by internal parties. This is purportedly to make third parties feel less directly competed with, and is a guarantee not provided by my above examples (Trader Joe's, etc.).
There is not a mountain of evidence that they look at unaggregated data, and it is absolutely difficult to prove a negative on. For example, let's say there's a single brand breaking through in a new electronics category. Let's say some enterprising internal brand manager is looking for up and comers to pull into Amazon Basics. Why not just search the site for that type of electronic? Or look at short term best seller lists?
I'm on the fence about what should or shouldn't be legal in this situation. But if Amazon can't do it, it seems clear that Trader Joe's, Costo, etc. shouldn't be able to do it, and that's quite a can of potentially anti-consumer worms.
Amazon has the policy, and the journalists have found sources saying they break them, so at the very least an internal investigation is warranted, or some non-criminal external investigation for transparency's sake. But as far as I understand (I am so ready to be corrected), Amazon does not even need to have such a data aggregation policy, much less have an iron-tight way of policing it. What this really looks like to me is Amazon shifting from being a third party seller platform to a more highly curated internal/external hybrid platform, just as maker supermarkets did in the 90's. Believe me there was a lot of handwringing then about the practice at supermarkets, but now it is commonplace and one can argue that it is ultimately a benefit to the ecosystem.
The issue is that Amazon can leverage that data, and no one else can. That is anti-competitive.
A grocer can get away with whitelabeling, because the manufacturer of the product is bought from as a supplier. Therefore every brand/product in the store, regardless of the manufacturer or "brand" is essentially the grocer's product. In that sense what grocer's are doing is more inventory management. None of their suppliers are "harmed" by that in house data processing.
Amazon, on the other hand, is fundamentally harming the members of it's marketplace because they never make a purchase to prop up other members of the marketplace. Instead, they use those marketplace actors in order to target high return corners of the market in which to compete without taking any of the risk; and crucially, without also making aggregate data available to all sellers.
In effect, every Amazon seller is a risk sink. Everyone else suffers the downsides of poor market fit, but if there's a sector with good profitability, you can bet that Amazon is on it as soon as possible with a brand new Amazon Basics offering. Essentially leveraging their scale to extract as much retail volume out of the market for themselves at everyone else's expense.
Dismissing this looking at seller data due to it being aggregated is like marketing one's tobacco as toasted. You're drawing attention to something irrelevant in the hopes that no one keeps going down the path that leads them to realize you're abusing your advantaged position to the detriment of everyone else involved.
Aggregating the data doesn't make it one lick less anticompetitive. Carving a distinction based on aggregation is every bit as much of a dodge as hand-wringing over proving a negative.
> that's quite a can of potentially anti-consumer worms.
There is a fundamental difference in the volume of data collected by Trader Joe, Costco et al and Amazon.
Costco at best knows what I bought at their store, Amazon knows a lot more than that. Just from the data they collect on the store they will know how many people compared what products with what else, what are they searching for, what is in who's shopping list, they will likely know demographics and lot more information about the buyers as well.
It is not remotely the same problem between online and offline.
Actually retailers are far more sophisticated than you think. Plenty of data brokers work with them to help piece together a larger puzzle. Plenty of startups willing to help them get to the sophistication of Amazon as well. Still early days for knowing consumer shopping behaviour in store but they pretty much know who you are if you signed up for loyalty cards or paid by card.
While it is more sophisticated than most people think, target famously knowing about a pregnancy, even before a close family member does happen , online will always have lot more data, and it is just not data on the website only .
Same way we legislate privacy ? Our shopping data should be just as anonymous as browsing and PII perhaps more so . This is not much different from GDPR type regulation ?.
How do we make companies follow it is different issue altogether . First step is the make liability exposure high for violating (like COPA ?) and provide consumes right to access what they have on you.
There is no technical way privacy of this or any other kind can be guaranteed, companies internal controls are always going to be opaque and data collection looking from the interfaces we can audit may not visible .
We can only make it higher risk legally and give consumers frameworks to make it easier to expose violations
Individual shopping data from the consumer to the retailer. That should be PII and treated like any other sensitive data.
Aggregate data on what consumers bought from the retailer. This is the retailer's data.
Individual sales data from sellers of the retailer's platform. This should be PII and treated like any other sensitive data.
Aggregate data on what consumers bought from all sellers on the retailer's platform. This is the retailer's data.
Individual data on consumer actions on the retailer's platform prior to purchasing an item. This can / should be PII. This includes search history, shopping cart, listings visited, etc.
Aggregate data on consumer actions on the retailer's platform prior to purchasing an item. This is the retailer's data.
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My position is it's unreasonable to ask retailers to limit their use of aggregated, anonymized data. And unless you limit that use, it doesn't materially change the current situation. The major difference between Walmart, Costco and Amazon is Amazon has a lot more aggregate data.
If retailer is just a retailer , aggregate sales data is theirs to do as pleased . If they are also sellers it is problem, if we cannot stop them collecting or using , then all sellers must have access to the same information.
Amazon has a policy, as described in this article, of not allowing individual seller's data to be used in non-aggregated form by internal parties. This is purportedly to make third parties feel less directly competed with, and is a guarantee not provided by my above examples (Trader Joe's, etc.).
There is not a mountain of evidence that they look at unaggregated data, and it is absolutely difficult to prove a negative on. For example, let's say there's a single brand breaking through in a new electronics category. Let's say some enterprising internal brand manager is looking for up and comers to pull into Amazon Basics. Why not just search the site for that type of electronic? Or look at short term best seller lists?
I'm on the fence about what should or shouldn't be legal in this situation. But if Amazon can't do it, it seems clear that Trader Joe's, Costo, etc. shouldn't be able to do it, and that's quite a can of potentially anti-consumer worms.
Amazon has the policy, and the journalists have found sources saying they break them, so at the very least an internal investigation is warranted, or some non-criminal external investigation for transparency's sake. But as far as I understand (I am so ready to be corrected), Amazon does not even need to have such a data aggregation policy, much less have an iron-tight way of policing it. What this really looks like to me is Amazon shifting from being a third party seller platform to a more highly curated internal/external hybrid platform, just as maker supermarkets did in the 90's. Believe me there was a lot of handwringing then about the practice at supermarkets, but now it is commonplace and one can argue that it is ultimately a benefit to the ecosystem.