Amazon has offered changes to how it treats third-party sellers on its Marketplace business and how it uses their data in an effort to appease concerns from the UK’s competition regulator.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation last year into whether the online retail giant had been giving its own brands and those which used its logistics services an unfair advantage over others on its online Marketplace.
The CMA has now said fresh commitments from Amazon are expected to ensure third-party sellers’ product offers have a fair chance of being prominently displayed to customers.
It added the technology giant pledged that sellers’ data will be prevented from being used to give Amazon an “unfair advantage”.
Amazon added that it will allow third-party businesses using Marketplace to negotiate their own rates directly with independent providers of Prime delivery services in order to secure potentially cheaper deals.
It will also have to appoint an independent trustee who will monitor the company’s compliance with these commitments.
The CMA said it is currently consulting over the changes offered but that its preliminary view is that the move “addresses its competition concerns”.
Ann Pope, senior director for enforcement at the CMA, said: “Amazon’s commitments to the CMA will help ensure that third-party sellers on Amazon Marketplace can compete on a level playing field against Amazon’s own retail business and, ultimately, mean that customers in the UK get a better deal.
“The CMA took this action after it heard concerns that Amazon was using its strength in the market to gain an advantage over thousands of businesses which use Amazon Marketplace to reach customers.
“We are now consulting on these commitments which we believe, at this stage, will address our concerns.”
An Amazon spokesman said: “While we disagree with the CMA’s preliminary concerns, we have engaged constructively with them to address the matters they have raised and to preserve our ability to serve UK customers and the more than 100,000 UK-based small and medium-sized businesses selling through our UK store.
“We are extremely proud of the work we’ve done to support our sellers’ success over the past two decades.”
