Sellers' sales growth in doubt? Amazon's own stores take away orders

Last week, we wrote about how Amazon no longer shows off its Prime Day, but instead chooses to keep a low profile and only disclose the sales of third-party sellers, positioning itself as an ally of third-party sellers to build reputation. As for the real sales data, the reason for not disclosing it may be because it is not conducive to establishing this image.

Recently, an analysis agency pulled data from Prime Day and said that Amazon was not as friendly to third-party sellers as it wanted to express. On the contrary, during this Prime Day, Amazon actually consolidated its dominant position and further eroded the market share of third-party sellers!

A report from an overseas analysis agency stated that according to preliminary data, Amazon's total sales for this Prime Day were predicted to be at least US$10.6 billion, a 49% increase over last year's Member Day .

However, a large part of the growth data came from Amazon's own products and brands, which surged from about 40% to about 65% of GMV , while the GMV share of third-party sellers fell from 60% to around 33% . Amazon's single-day sales of first-party electronic products (kindle, Echo, etc.) alone reached 260 million US dollars, almost twice as much as the same period last year.

In other words, although everyone's sales are growing overall, Amazon's own sales have grown more, while sellers have grown less, which has caused this drastic change in the sales ratio.

What is strange is that during the non-Prime Day period, third-party sellers still account for the majority of GMV share, and only during the two-day promotion period from 13th to 14th did the share of self-operated products surge . This is very unusual. It may be that Amazon's self-operated products have a larger discount, or Amazon has pushed a large amount of traffic to its self-operated products during Prime Day. This is another solid evidence of Amazon's unfair competition.

After reading this wave of data, you will realize how cunning Amazon's operation was last week. It only released the sales and growth data of sellers, and did not mention its own sales at all. If the public opinion and antitrust agencies knew that Amazon's own growth was greater and it squeezed the market share of third-party sellers, Amazon would definitely become the target of public criticism.

What Amazon fears most now is being caught by the antitrust agency again. Last month, we mentioned that Amazon was sanctioned by Japan's antitrust agency and was forced to submit a rectification plan, which even required it to refund tens of millions of dollars to suppliers and sellers.

The committee has accepted the rectification plan, and Amazon is about to start implementing these refunds and policy changes. This is also the biggest bleeding Amazon has suffered at the hands of antitrust agencies in various countries . The Fair Trade Commission's measures are really very powerful.

Amazon doesn't want to attract too much attention from such monopoly organizations, otherwise sanctions will surely come one after another. Just a few days after Prime Day ended, the Fair Trade Commission announced yesterday that it will start investigating whether another service of Amazon Japan is monopolistic on the 27th of this month. According to the last investigation, Amazon returned tens of millions of dollars, and this time, Amazon may bleed again.

From the data exposed this time, we can also see that Amazon's self-operated business should be regulated! Whether it is suppressing suppliers to demand lower prices/discounts, or deliberately tilting traffic during major promotions, Amazon is relying on its strong position as a platform to engage in unfair competition! The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a US trade association, also pointed out that this is Amazon's biggest monopoly problem at present, and it must be rectified or its business split.

In summary, although the growth of sellers on Prime Day is real, Amazon has made some small moves in data disclosure to cover up the fact that it has grown more and surpassed the seller share. Because exposing this point may lead to more stringent antitrust investigations.

If the self-operated business can be restrained under the antitrust investigation, we sellers can also control more sales share. So recently, everyone should take advantage of the wave after the big promotion to improve the ranking, maintain good product performance and strive for more orders.