Amazon faces huge fines! It may be as high as tens of billions!

Recently, foreign media broke the news that the governments of various states in the United States are reviewing the antitrust investigation report on Amazon, and said that they may take measures similar to Europe to impose a fine of tens of billions of dollars to stop the monopoly phenomenon! !

After the EU's antitrust investigation ended last month, the relevant agency has issued a preliminary solution, saying that Amazon may face a fine of up to 10% of its annual sales! If calculated based on Amazon's financial data this year, that would be a fine of up to $37 billion!

After the EU ruling, people have paid attention to the actions of relevant US agencies. After all, the US antitrust investigation ended before the EU. The foreign media's revelation this time is to obtain the latest actions of the US antitrust agency. The federal government and California and Washington states have launched a second wave of investigations on Amazon's monopoly position. It is reported that this investigation will not last long, and it is more about further evidence collection on several core issues in the first wave of investigation reports.

We analyzed the US investigation report in detail at the time, and found that Amazon has several core issues that are the focus of the antitrust agency.

1. After actual investigation, the antitrust investigation team found that Amazon controls at least 50% of the US online retail market, which is much higher than the data of third-party investigation agencies (38%). It can be said that Amazon has a substantial monopoly position in the US e-commerce platform. This exaggerated share makes competing platforms have no competitiveness in front of Amazon.

2. Taking advantage of its monopoly position in the e-commerce industry, Amazon is engaging in unequal competition with other service providers in logistics, cloud services and other aspects, such as preventing logistics providers such as FedEx and UPS from accessing the third-party seller market.

3. Due to the huge market share, third-party sellers have no other choice to join the platform, and this advantage is used to squeeze out third-party sellers on the platform. Not only does the platform use the sellers’ data to develop its own products, but it also monopolizes the right to interpret all rules.

The latest investigation is to collect evidence again for these core issues. Although the relevant departments did not disclose the detailed content of the investigation, foreign media learned through leaked documents that the projects of the second round of investigation are very specific, including an investigation into the matching logic of Amazon's gold shopping cart and whether Amazon is fair and just when matching shopping carts.

Relevant personnel said in an interview that the investigation will be concluded soon, and there will be a preliminary opinion on how to deal with Amazon at that time, which may be a fine similar to that of the European Union (37 billion US dollars!).

Greater supervision will benefit sellers, because the investigation will involve a lot of the relationship between Amazon and third-party sellers, so Amazon will definitely not introduce policy changes that are very unfavorable to sellers during the investigation, and it will also establish itself as a friend of sellers.

This was the case during Prime Day and Black Friday Cyber ​​Monday this year. In previous years, Amazon would release sales data for major promotional holidays very late, and would publicize its platform sales in a big way like Tmall’s promotion of “exceeding 100 million in x seconds” on Double Eleven.

However, this year Amazon broke its usual practice and advertised as soon as the big sale ended, "Third-party sellers on our platform earned xx billion!" This action is nothing more than sending a signal to regulators, "I am a friend of small businesses! If you touch me, you will touch everyone's pockets!" This will make regulators cautious when formulating solutions.

In short, the period before the processing results are released is an excellent business window for sellers. Take advantage of the end of the year to plan the new product development and promotion ideas for the new year! I have prepared a map of Amazon's latest product selection, development and promotion ideas for everyone! (as shown below)