Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Series Vol. 32 , 10 November 2023
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
This article focuses on the vertical market power of online platforms and the case study of Amazon. Firstly, this article analyses the problems of unfair competition, deep bundling of services, and consumer privacy that result from Amazon's platform being too powerful in terms of vertical market power. These problems lead to a loss of interest for third-party sellers and consumers and a significant increase in Amazon's revenue, likely creating a monopoly in this productive online platform segment. The second focuses on both quantitative and qualitative aspects of Amazon's vertical market power, broadly determining whether Amazon is a monopoly. It also concludes by examining how to address the problems caused by these vertical market forces. The government and competition regulators are the main focus, with strict controls on Amazon's behaviour in terms of pricing and acquisitions. Treat Amazon as a paradigm for the entire online platform.
vertical market power, Amazon, online platforms
1. Marketplace Pulse: Amazon’s Fastest Growing Markets (2023). https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/amazons-fastest-growing-markets.
2. Amazon 2022 Proxy statement. https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2022/ar/Amazon-2022-Proxy-Statement.pdf.
3. Ducci, F.: E-Commerce Marketplaces. In Natural Monopolies in Digital Platform Markets (Global Competition Law and Economics Policy, pp. 76-96). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108867528.004 (2020).
4. Marketplace Pulse: Marketplace Pulse Year in Review 2022 (2022). https://www.marketplacepulse.com/year-in-review-2022.
5. Amazon 2021 Annual Report https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2022/ar/Amazon-2021-Annual-Report.pdf.
6. Marketplace Pulse: Amazon Takes a 50% Cut of Seller’s Revenue (2023). https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/amazon-takes-a-50-cut-of-sellers-revenue.
7. Birkinbine, B., Bilić, P.: The Amazon–MGM Deal. The Political Economy of Communication, 9(2) (2022).
8. Flood, Z. C.: Antitrust Enforcement in the Developing E-Book Market: Apple, Amazon, and the Future of the Publishing Industry. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 31(2), 879–904 (2016). https://www.jstor.org/stable/26377775.
9. Melnik MI., Alm J.: Does a seller’s ecommerce reputation matter? Evidence from ebay auctions. J Ind Econ 50:337–349 (2002).
10. eBay 2021 Anuual Report https://ebay.q4cdn.com/610426115/files/doc_financials/2021/ar/2021-Annual-Report-(1).pdf.
11. Yltaevae L.: Reasons U.S consumers shop at Amazon 2022 (2023). https://www.statista.com/statistics/1311765/reasons-to-shop-on-amazon-united-states/?locale=en.
12. He, L., Reimers, I., & Shiller, B.: Does Amazon Exercise Its Market Power? Evidence from Toys“R”Us. The Journal of Law and Economics (2022). https://doi.org/10.1086/720824
13. Haucap, J., Heimeshoff, U.: Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay: Is the Internet driving competition or market monopolization?. Int Econ Econ Policy 11, 49–61 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10368-013-0247-6
14. European Commission, Antitrust: Commission Accepts Commitments from Amazon
15. Bundeskartellamt: Amazon Removes Price Parity Obligation for Retailers on Its Marketplace Platform, Case Report B6-46/12 (2013).
16. Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (New York: Little, Brown, 2013).
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Authors who publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See Open Access Instruction).