Most of the products they’re white labeling aren’t new per se. It doesn’t take a genius to white label juice, soap, or butter. While Amazon is copying everything, including novel products.
Stores are increasingly moving away from "their own sales data". Costco, for instance, demands a 6 month payment plan on inventory[0], which effectively means they are following the Amazon route by being a marketplace for inventory which the distributor still owns. Best Buy does this as well.
By “vendor”, do you mean the one providing it to the customer? Because Amazon does that to with their FBA service.
The vendors I’m talking about are ones like Frito Lay, Nabisco, Coke, etc. The vendors deliver the product and (sometimes) put it out, but the store knows what’s selling and when. If the vendor wanted that information, they’d have to ask the store (through contracts), or watch the shelves themselves.
And despite what Amazon says, they’re a store. They just blur the line between store and marketplace. The “vendors” in Amazon’s case are the third party sellers. They pay Amazon a percentage of their sale for the ability to sell on Amazon.com. At the same time, Amazon sells stuff they buy and markup themselves (books for example).
In both cases, the product is commingled (white label next to name brand), and the customer doesn’t always know if they’re buying a vendor or a store brand. Amazon will tell you “sold and shipped by X”, but you have to know to look for that.
The vendor is the party you form a contract with. They get liability for product problems. In a store that's the store. On Amazon it might be dropshipper748.
This gives stores an incentive not to stock, say, dangerous electronics from untraceable vendors in China. And it gives you someone to sue if the phone charger burns your house down.
Again. I’m not talking about that definition of vendor. But if you insist to use that one, Amazon can be liable for products sold on their marketplace (at least in California).
The supermarket makes a deal to buy products from the producer that the producer white labels while also selling the normally labelled product. Amazon doesn't work with the producers, they kill the producers, then apply pressure to the suppliers. Their monopoly like power is bad for so many in the supply chain.
I wouldn't call drop-shippers the producer. The producers are the factories. The individual Amazon is cutting out is the middle-man. He tends to get our sympathy because he's smaller than Amazon, but really, he's just a needless step in the process of getting goods from factory to consumer. Amazon isn't stealing IP here, they are cutting out a middle man.
And you and I win when he is cut out of the process.
You and I don't win when amazon becomes the sole supplier and they have no reason to undercut competitor prices anymore and jack up their prices and they no longer have any incentive to innovate. This business practice of theirs is not solely done with resellers, but with manufacturers as well. It is ridiculously unfair that they are the market, they see what products sell quickly and for what prices, and that they are then able to take over the ones that have great margins. The end state is Amazon eats all profitable business lines and everyone else fights for scraps. That will be good for shareholders and no one else.
Amazon is not the sole supplier. Amazon buys from a variety of suppliers and distributes it via their online sales platform. Amazon doesn't have factories. They don't build widgets. They sell them.
Assuming there's no legitimate IP infringement going on, then it's not different as far as I can tell. In my view, if the Amazon store is so big that it can use its market power to make the market worse (for buyers, sellers, or both), then make that argument on its own. The specific practice of noticing that popular third-party items can be offered by the store at a lower price isn't a problem in my view. If the convenience store on the corner sells homemade cookies cheaper than the Oreos on the shelf, is that really a problem?
