Amazon's own business was cut!? European site is about to take off

More than a month has passed since the sellers besieged Amazon Shenzhen. In this incident, we sellers have truly felt that some of Amazon's policies are really unfair clauses that "Amazon reserves the right of final interpretation." In this incident, Amazon used the vaguely defined "price fraud clause" to block the seller's store, and even if the seller appealed, he could not get back the store and frozen funds.

This "final right of interpretation" is undoubtedly unfair treatment of sellers, and there is no third-party supervision. Amazon almost has the final say in dealing with conflicts with sellers.

In response to this situation, the European Union launched an antitrust investigation into Amazon in July last year. The investigation has recently come to an end, and the antitrust agency has drafted an indictment and is preparing to file a lawsuit against Amazon in the near future.

This antitrust investigation will greatly improve the business environment for sellers on the European site, and it is not impossible for the European site to take off directly by taking this opportunity.

According to internal information, the content of this antitrust indictment is mainly divided into two parts: one is aimed at the existing unequal policies and regulations on the Amazon platform, and the other is aimed at Amazon's own products.

Unequal policies are just like the "price fraud" we mentioned at the beginning. In fact, the antitrust agency has forced Amazon to modify an unequal rule before. This is a rule that old sellers may be more familiar with: "requiring sellers to provide the lowest price on the entire network." Under this clause, sellers cannot sell at a lower price elsewhere.

Last year, Amazon revised this rule under pressure from antitrust agencies, no longer requiring sellers to offer the lowest price on the entire network. Therefore, antitrust investigations are of real benefit to us sellers, forcing Amazon to modify its unfair rules and providing a strong channel for sellers to file complaints when they are treated unfairly by Amazon.

In addition to monitoring Amazon's unequal policies, the lawsuit will also focus on cracking down on Amazon's own business .

We sellers all know that Amazon collects data from all third-party sellers to develop its own products. This method allows Amazon to directly target hot-selling products without having to pay for research and development and testing. However, the sales data of third-party sellers should belong to us. Amazon's behavior is not only opportunistic, but also a serious violation of the law.

Previously, the United States launched a similar antitrust investigation against Amazon for the same reason, but the investigation ended in nothing. But this time the situation will be very different, because the EU antitrust agency has great power and can even determine whether there is monopoly behavior and impose fines of up to 10% of the target turnover without court approval.

Under such strong supervision, Amazon's own business in Europe will definitely shrink to some extent. At the same time, Amazon cannot have unfair traffic tilt and support for its own products. Third-party sellers and self-operated businesses will be put on a relatively fair starting line to compete.

After the self-operated business ebbs, a considerable amount of market share will be released, and what is even more impressive is the recent strong growth of the European site.

According to data from traffic analysis platform SimilarWeb, Amazon's overall traffic surged by 24.6% in May. The growth of the five European sites was particularly astonishing, and the UK site even surpassed the US site with a 28.2% increase.

Among them, the Netherlands site had just been launched in early March, so its growth rate was exaggerated to 2088%, while the four sites including Germany, Italy, France and Spain also increased to varying degrees. This was due to the early isolation measures in Europe, which have now resumed work on a large scale.

The European site is a high-quality site with a large market size and high consumption level. After the antitrust agency intervened to rectify Amazon, I believe that the European site will have more preferential policies for sellers. In addition, the North American Mexican site has begun to collect VAT, which has also reduced its advantage over the European site. It can be said that now is a very good time to enter the European site.