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Can Amazon 'have its cake & eat it too' by being both unique and 'just like other retailers', depending on the situation/benefit? Your thoughts? Excerpts: About 20 years ago, Jeff Bezos told CNET Magazine that the then-eight-year-old company wanted to become “something completely new” in retail. “There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming,” he said. “And our vision hasn’t changed at all the last few years.” “The early days of online trade were bursting with possibility,” the FTC writes in court documents. “Competition flourished. A newly connected nation saw a wide-open frontier where anyone with a good idea would have a fair shot at success. Today, however, this wide-open frontier has been enclosed. A single company, Amazon, has seized control over much of the online retail economy.” As the e-commerce giant is preparing to face these claims in court, several analysts, and the company itself, seem to be shying away from the idea that Amazon is a unique and powerful player. What the FTC describes as anticompetitive, they argue, is commonplace in the retail industry and has been for decades. “Amazon may not be the small business it once was, but we’re still just a piece of a massive and robust retail market with numerous options for consumers and sellers,” David Zapolsky, Amazon general counsel and senior vice president of global public policy, said in a blog post on Sept. 26, following up on initial comments on the FTC’s move. Walmart’s recent assertiveness around its own online marketplace and pricing initiatives, which several analysts see as taking share from Amazon, Target and others, is further proof that Amazon has plenty of competition, others say. Arun Sundaram, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, (like many commenting on the long-anticipated FTC antitrust action), used the words “uphill battle.” Also like others, he predicted little would change at Amazon as a result of it. Put simply, the FTC alleges that Amazon exercises power over its marketplace sellers, to their detriment as well as consumers’. The e-commerce giant locks sellers into its ecosystem — both its Prime membership audience as well as its warehouse and fulfillment network — slaps them with rising fees and hampers their ability to sell via their own websites or other platforms, according to the FTC complaint and some sellers themselves. “What we need to focus on here is that millions of Americans, who were trying to save money by comparing prices on the online shopping platform, were, in fact, cheated out of buying merchandise at a competitive price and higher quality, via a degraded online shopping experience,” Asciolla said. “This is just another example of a corporate behemoth using its market power to enrich itself while blatantly taking advantage of consumers.” #amazon #retail
