Amazon Scooped Up Data From Its Own Sellers to Launch Competing Products

The two products pictured above are from Fortem (on top), a private seller on Amazon, and Amazon's product (on bottom). The company owners pay Amazon about $60,000 a month to be advertised first on Amazon for people looking for products such as this. The complaint from Fortem is that Amazon has used their private selling data to create a product to compete against them. Amazon has come on record stating that it is against Amazon's policy to use their data to create a competing product. It appears that Amazon has done an internal investigation and found no evidence they did anything wrong. The internal investigation is still ongoing.



Current and former Amazon employees have come forward saying that they do look into third party sellers data to create products to reach a new market. Could this be a coincidence or is Amazon violating their policy to find profits in other markets? The answer may seem obvious but only Amazon has the proof and we'll find out once they investigate themselves.

Consumers do not bother looking into what Amazon is doing as long as their are more inexpensive or comparable products. When searching for a product the consumer looks for the best deal. This could lead to Amazon not being held accountable for their actions against third party sellers.



What products have you seen on Amazon that could fall into this investigation?



https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015?mod=hp_lead_pos5