EcomCrew - [Crew Review] Tough week for Amazon

Taming a giant

Leveling the Playing Field

Last week, President Biden signed a sweeping Executive Order to reinforce fair competition in the American economy. 

For Big Tech companies, that means thinking twice about "killer acquisitions" of would-be competitors. 

The EO also calls for the FTC to come up with stricter rules on data collection and surveillance. 

One of the goals is to prevent instances like Amazon using seller data to straight up copy products, particularly those without any trademark protection.

Because Amazon is basically a seller running its own marketplace, it can display its own copycat products more prominently than those of third-party sellers.

This makes one wonder why a not-so-transparent company would have sellers pay for anti-counterfeit services like… well, Transparency.

More Bad News for Amazon

Retailer + Marketplace + Logistics company = Amazon. 

That and a number of other reasons seem to have refueled Congress’s desire to scrutinize Amazon’s business model for potential anti-competitive practices. 

Amazon seems to be giving itself an unfair advantage over third-party sellers if it (Amazon) happens to be selling a competing product within the same category. Among other things, that means giving its own products the coveted Buy Box.

One potential scenario is having Amazon split its e-commerce business from its third-party marketplace, ergo, force the ecommerce giant to compete as if it were a third-party seller. 

If Amazon ceases to be judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to products sold online, you can bet that sales from third-party sellers will shoot up. That’s something we can all (except Amazon) look forward to. 

Is It Q3 Already?

Speaking of things to look forward to, if you’re in ecommerce, the holidays are right around the corner at this point. 

This year, Amazon Pay is offering an early Christmas gift to sellers by giving them a chance to get featured in its Holiday Gift Guide, which highlights new products and merchants to Amazon customers during peak season. 

The catch is that you have to launch Amazon Pay on your ecommerce website by October 15.

You can do this by creating an Amazon Pay merchant account.

Having the Amazon Pay logo on your checkout page could improve brand image and customer experience, because who has time to key in their info every time they buy something online, right? 

Naturally, the undying issue of having more of your eggs in the Amazon basket rears its ugly head. So ask yourself: Are you comfortable with more Amazon integration, what with their constant policy drops and the whole restock limits fiasco? 

Ecommerce Giants Grew By Double Digits

So much for Amazon having it rough, the ecommerce giant still saw a nearly 40% growth in revenue during the pandemic year. 

This is based on a report by GlobalData showing that 8 out of the top 10 ecommerce companies by revenue saw double-digit growths in 2020. 

Trailing Amazon are Chinese giants JD and Alibaba, while home products specialist Wayfair is a pleasant surprise coming in at #5 with a $14.1B growth.

Of course, most of this growth stems from pandemic-induced changes in consumer behavior, but we imagine a lot of consumers will want to stick to online shopping, if only for convenience.

Hired Any Influencers Lately? 

Recent data from Thinknum reveals that Amazon beat out Google and the social media itself, Facebook, in terms of job listings for creators as of 2021 Q2. 

Ecommerce live streaming is nothing new, but eMarketer thinks that Amazon’s interest in the creator economy factors greatly into its plans for Amazon Live, which lets influencers recommend products to their followers for a commission. 

Messenger and Instagram marketing are taking off as well, so Amazon might be onto something here, and it could be a good idea to get in on the action early.

Speaking of getting in on the action early, we’re opening our Premium enrollment very soon. You can sign up now to get notified.

Get me on the waitlist.