Amazon agrees to change its commercial practices to avoid a million-dollar fine from Brussels for abusing its dominant position. Thus, the European Commission approves Amazon’s obligations, so it cannot use the seller’s data market and provides equal access to Buy Box and Prime.
“Today’s decision sets new rules for how Amazon conducts its business in Europe. Amazon can no longer abuse its dual role and will have to change several business practices. These include data usage, seller selection in the Buy Box, and terms of access to the Amazon Prime program. Independent retailers and carriers, as well as consumers, will benefit from these changes, which open up new opportunities and options,” said European Vice President for Competition Margrethe Vestager.
To address data use concerns, Amazon has proposed not to use non-public data related to or derived from the activities of independent sellers on its marketplace for its retail business. This applies both to Amazon’s automated tools and to employees who may cross-use Amazon data. Amazon Market making retail decisions; Do not use such data to sell branded products, including your private label products.
With respect to the Buy Box, Amazon has proposed that all sellers be treated equally when ranking bids for the purpose of selecting a Buy Box winner; Show a second competing offer to the Buy Box winner if there is a second offer from another seller that is sufficiently different from the first in price and/or delivery. Both offers display the same descriptive information and provide the same shopping experience.
And with respect to Prime’s concerns, Amazon has proposed maintaining non-discriminatory terms and conditions for qualifying Marketplace sellers and offers for Prime; Allow Prime sellers to freely choose any carrier for their logistics and delivery services and negotiate terms directly with the carrier of their choice and not use information obtained through Prime about the terms and performance of third-party carriers for their own logistics services.
“We are glad that we responded to the European Commission’s concerns and were able to resolve them. While we continue to disagree with some of its preliminary findings, we have maintained a constructive relationship with the Commission to ensure that we continue to meet the needs of our customers in Europe and support more than 225,000 European SMEs. They sell in our stores,” Amazon sources said.
Source: El Diario
