I personally think it depends on if the sales data is from FBA or sold by Amazon. If it's sold by Amazon data that should be fair game for Amazon to do whatever it wants.
I'm a little uncomfortable with them using FBA data (marketplace), since those FBA sellers are paying Amazon for all kinds of services (distribution, storage, ads, payments, returns). So it seems a little unfair that they'd be paying a company who goes back around and uses their data to launch competing products.
Is this data different than the data that a major retailer would get from sales of a product on its shelves?
I'm also not saying that this is certainly 100% fair. I just doubt the motives of the media on this point because they knew that major retailers were doing this, and they never said a word about it.
>Is this data different than the data that a major retailer would get from sales of a product on its shelves?
This is what sold by Amazon items are like, and also why I don't care what Amazon does with that data.
With FBA, to me it seems more like if like a cloud provider (who I pay for specific services) decided to launch products/services based my internal data that they could see and wasn't public.
> With FBA, to me it seems more like if like a cloud provider (who I pay for specific services) decided to launch products/services based my internal data that they could see and wasn't public.
Amazon has been accused of that as well.[1] They claimed to have a policy not to do it, but admitted they could not guarantee that they have never violated it.[2] They are also known to monitor client data to help them decide which companies to try to acquire.[3]
Think of it like the modern 4K TV who’s price factors in the manufacturer selling your viewing habits to marketers. Of course nobody wants that, but it’s already baked into the price.
In Amazon’s case, all sellers know they’re hoovering up their sales data and have done so since day one. Now whether they should have a more expensive, “don’t mine my data” option is debatable. But if it’s anything like the TV industry there’s just no viable market for it. The price difference would allow someone who doesn’t care about the long term to undercut you.
I'm a little uncomfortable with them using FBA data (marketplace), since those FBA sellers are paying Amazon for all kinds of services (distribution, storage, ads, payments, returns). So it seems a little unfair that they'd be paying a company who goes back around and uses their data to launch competing products.