The US government wants to remove Amazon’s own products from the shelves! ?

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On Amazon, not only do we third-party sellers have to compete with each other, but Amazon itself also competes. Amazon's own products have a place in almost every category.

These official products have all the advantages in terms of traffic inclination, search position, ranking, etc. We Amazon sellers are already accustomed to the situation where the official is both an athlete and a referee .

Getting used to it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. Sellers just have no choice but to get used to such unfair terms. And to completely change this unequal status quo, it can only be rectified from the outside by a government agency with a large enough scale . The Indian government is the first country to take this step.

At the end of last year, the Indian government announced the introduction of relevant laws and regulations: e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart are not allowed to sell their own products or those of their holding subsidiaries on their own platforms. (The bill came into effect on February 1 this year)

This will directly prevent the platform from using its own products to gain an overwhelming advantage in terms of policies and traffic, and provide sellers and buyers with a relatively fair competitive environment . As third-party sellers, we are naturally willing to see the government intervene and supervise Amazon, but in India alone, too few sellers benefit.

What if the US government, Amazon’s largest market, follows India’s lead?

Just last Friday, US Senator Elizabeth Warren announced a plan targeting Internet giants such as Amazon and Google on her social media account.

The original text is as follows:

Senator Elizabeth Warren said that because giants such as Amazon and Google now have too much power, they have undermined the principle of fair competition. Warren has drawn up a plan to break up the major Internet giants and limit their existing rights.

The 2020 US presidential candidate gave an example in his announced plan: In 1990, Microsoft attempted to extend its monopoly in operating systems to the browser industry, and was accused by the government of violating antitrust laws and restricted, which led to the birth of innovative companies such as Google and Facebook.

Behaviors like Amazon copying other players' popular products and selling them under its own brand, relying on its own advantages to crush and strangle competitors, have seriously affected fair competition in the market, and improvement measures are urgent.

The plan proposes two solutions to the above problems:

First , legislation should be enacted to restrict the platform-based businesses of large technology companies, requiring them to comply with fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory standards and prohibiting platform owners from participating in competition (that is, selling their own products) .

Second , establish a supervisory body to review all technology acquisitions that may lead to monopoly or illegal competition, such as Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods.

Judging from the content alone, the government's intervention in the platform's monopoly is undoubtedly good news for us small and medium-sized sellers. We no longer need to carefully deal with Amazon's various rules and regulations or the crushing competition directly from Amazon. We sellers can sell on Amazon with more confidence and boldness .

But how will Amazon respond? Will the company just give up?

In fact, from a series of recent actions by Amazon, we can see the trends of some platforms. Last time, we mentioned that Amazon has closed the VC accounts of some suppliers and suspended the direct delivery channels of all VC accounts, and then recommended these suppliers to register SC third-party seller accounts for sales ( click here to review )

Amazon is the purchaser of suppliers, and the goods provided by suppliers are sold on Amazon as "Sold by Amazon". After shutting down these VC accounts, these self-operated products will be directly removed from the shelves.

This wave of operations to drive suppliers to SC's ordinary accounts for sales now seems not only to rectify the abuse of authority by VC accounts, but also to anticipate suppression and restrictions from the government in the future, and to make strategic arrangements for suppliers and other self-operated businesses in advance.

If my brother-in-law has already made arrangements in advance, it means that Amazon will not fight against this trend. Therefore, after this proposal is announced, the frequency of self-operated products being removed from the shelves will become faster and faster until there are no self-operated products on Amazon at all.

Globally, governments have proposed restrictions on giant Internet companies like Amazon. This year will be a great window of opportunity for sellers like us. The Amazon market, which has just been restricted by external forces, will have room for more sellers to rise.

However, it is not good news for some existing VC sellers. Since the last VC Anaconda incident, the number of sellers abusing VC privileges has decreased significantly. However, there are still VC sellers who use the supply orders to Amazon to brush reviews (because the risk of having reviews deleted for self-operated products is small), and then follow the sales with their own accounts to place a large number of orders.

Now that self-operated products are in danger, it is only a matter of time before VC is merged. Sellers who use this method are already facing the situation of having to start over. In addition to fake orders, can we not use pure operational means to do well on Amazon? Of course not, every operational seller who takes the boutique route is a living example.

Staying away from fake orders and getting closer to operations is the future path of Amazon. I have also compiled a collection of Amazon operation skills for you. Students can scan the QR code and contact me to receive it~

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group

Source: Cross-border Business School

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