The European Commission right now introduced that it has opened a proper antitrust investigation on Amazon. EC feels that Amazon could have used delicate information from unbiased retailers who promote on its market, such utilization is in opposition to EU competitors guidelines.
The foremost drawback for Amazon is that it acts each as a retailer and a market. As per EC’s preliminary finiding, Amazon used competitively delicate data – about market sellers, their merchandise and transactions on {the marketplace} with a view to promote its retail enterprise.
As a part of the investiagration, European Commission will look into:
The customary agreements between Amazon and market sellers, which permit Amazon’s retail enterprise to analyse and use third celebration vendor information. In explicit, the Commission will deal with whether or not and the way the usage of accrued market vendor information by Amazon as a retailer impacts competitors.The function of information within the collection of the winners of the “Buy Box” andthe influence of Amazon’s potential use of competitively delicate market vendor data on that choice. The “Buy Box” is displayed prominently on Amazon and permits clients so as to add objects from a selected retailer immediately into their buying carts. Winning the “Buy Box” appears key for market sellers as a overwhelming majority of transactions are carried out by it.
“European consumers are increasingly shopping online. E-commerce has boosted retail competition and brought more choice and better prices. We need to ensure that large online platforms don’t eliminate these benefits through anti-competitive behaviour. I have therefore decided to take a very close look at Amazon’s business practices and its dual role as marketplace and retailer, to assess its compliance with EU competition rules,” mentioned Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
If confirmed, Amazon could face big fines and extreme enterprise restrictions.
