Amazon, a world-famous company, is an e-commerce company that operates the world’s largest online shopping platform. In the backstage, Amazon is a data-driven company whose retail decisions are mostly driven by automated systems, fueled by the relevant market data. That being said, Amazon has a dual role as a platform: It runs a marketplace where independent sellers can sell products directly to consumers and at the same time, it sells products on its platform as a retailer, in competition with independent sellers. As a result of this dual position, Amazon has access to large sets of data about the independent sellers’ activities on its platform, including non-public business data.
On 17 July 2019, the European Commission (“Commission”) had launched a formal investigation to assess whether Amazon’s use of this non-public data from independent retailers selling in its marketplace breached the European Union competition rules.
In parallel, the Commission had launched a second investigation on 10 November 2020 into:
Amazon’s Buy Box practice, which prominently displays the offer of one single seller and allows products to be swiftly purchased by directly clicking on a buy button, and;
Amazon’s Prime program, which offers premium services to customers for a monthly or yearly fee and allows independent sellers to sell to Prime customers under certain conditions.
