How Amazon imposes its private label on its customers

[Edit October 2019] It is now a fact that Amazon is imposing its private label on its Marketplace, to the detriment of other brands.

A Marketplace full of different products in terms of supply chain

Amazon is a huge selection of products that are sold through the Marketplace or by Amazon directly. In this gigantic online shop, most buyers make their purchasing decisions in one or two glances. The buying process is therefore extremely fast.

If we clearly summarize the different types of products listed, we have :

• World-famous brands
• Lesser-known or unbranded products
• Private labels

These products can be sold through three different types of supply chain and distribution:

• Sellers in the Marketplace. (Shipped by seller = FBM or shipped by Amazon = FBA)
• By Amazon having purchased them from a supplier(Sold and Shipped by Amazon)
• Made by Amazon themselves (Amazon Basics for example)

Amazon's Private Label favoured over other brands selling on the Marketplace

Recently, Amazon added a feature that allows its own brands to be presented to the potential customer before they add their products to their shopping carts. These private labels are highlighted above the buy button advertising a lower price for products such as bin liners, soles or batteries.

In France, we can see that Amazon Basics products, for example, are well positioned via Headline Search campaigns on the "Batteries" queries. It is therefore difficult for Energizer, for example, to dislodge Amazon itself.

This may seem like an aggressive approach and an abuse of dominance, but Amazon defends itself by saying that

Like all retailers, we promote our own brands in our shops, providing high quality products and great value to customers.

This internal competition in the Marketplace has already been investigated and monitored by European and American regul ators and the Federal Trade Commission.

This is a matter to be followed, assome brands are seeing sales fall by as much as 90% and are beginning to turn to other marketplaces to sell their products, such as Wallmart or Ebay in the United States.

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