Bye-box: An analysis of non-promotion on the amazon marketplace

Matthias Hunold; Ulrich Laitenberger; Guillaume Thébaudin

Bye-box: An analysis of non-promotion on the amazon marketplace

Matthias Hunold, Ulrich Laitenberger, Guillaume Thébaudin

Research output: Working paper › Discussion paper › Other research output

Abstract

We study seller and product recommendations of the hybrid e-commerce platform Amazon. Using web-scraped data, we find that Amazon makes the visibility of offers of third-party suppliers in the "buybox" dependent on prices on competing marketplaces like Walmart and eBay. Amazon’s own offers are visible regardless of their competitiveness. We find that the absence of seller recommendations makes recommendations to related products more effective and Amazon tends to steer consumers in these situations more often to products it sells itself. We discuss that this behavior is difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis of an independent marketplace operator.

Original language	English
Volume	4
Publication status	Published - Jun 2022
Externally published	Yes

Publication series

Name	Centre de Recherche en Economie et Droit (CRED)

Cite this

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AU - Thébaudin, Guillaume

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N2 - We study seller and product recommendations of the hybrid e-commerce platform Amazon. Using web-scraped data, we find that Amazon makes the visibility of offers of third-party suppliers in the "buybox" dependent on prices on competing marketplaces like Walmart and eBay. Amazon’s own offers are visible regardless of their competitiveness. We find that the absence of seller recommendations makes recommendations to related products more effective and Amazon tends to steer consumers in these situations more often to products it sells itself. We discuss that this behavior is difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis of an independent marketplace operator.

AB - We study seller and product recommendations of the hybrid e-commerce platform Amazon. Using web-scraped data, we find that Amazon makes the visibility of offers of third-party suppliers in the "buybox" dependent on prices on competing marketplaces like Walmart and eBay. Amazon’s own offers are visible regardless of their competitiveness. We find that the absence of seller recommendations makes recommendations to related products more effective and Amazon tends to steer consumers in these situations more often to products it sells itself. We discuss that this behavior is difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis of an independent marketplace operator.

M3 - Discussion paper

VL - 4

T3 - Centre de Recherche en Economie et Droit (CRED)

BT - Bye-box: An analysis of non-promotion on the amazon marketplace

ER -

Bye-box: An analysis of non-promotion on the amazon marketplace

Abstract

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