【英文】ILSR报告：亚马逊，科技巨头如何利用小企业为其垄断帝国提供资金（23页）

英文研究报告 2022年01月10日 12:25 管理员

In a similar fashion, Amazon has compelled sellers to buy its warehousing and shipping service, Fulfifillment By Amazon (FBA). Amazon’s algorithms heavily favor sellers who do so, making FBA all but required in order to generate sales on the site.5 As a result, the share of sellers who have left other carriers and signed on to FBA has soared in recent years.6 By compelling this captive base of businesses to use its shipping service, Amazon has grown into a major logistics provider almost overnight. Its parcel delivery operation now rivals that of the U.S. Postal Service in scale.7 And, over the last few years, Amazon has steadily raised its storage and shipping fees, using FBA as yet another way to squeeze revenue from sellers. The crushing weight of these fees is capsizing many businesses. When his startup began selling its unique sports apparel on Amazon in 2016, it was a viable business, says Steve, who asked not to be identifified for fear that Amazon would retaliate against his company.

But then Amazon increased its referral fee for clothing, from 15 percent to 17 percent, and devoted a growing share of the space on its search results pages to sponsored product ads. To sell $10,000 worth of clothing today, Steve explains, he must pay Amazon $1,700 in referral fees and spend another $1,500 to $2,000 on ads, not to mention a host of smaller fees. “Amazon is now taking more of the pie than I am. And you cannot run a sustainable business like that,” he says.8 Steve has tried to escape Amazon’s grip by selling on other platforms. But he’s had no luck generating more than a trickle of orders on these sites. It would help if he could lower his prices on these sites, he says, but Amazon effectively blocks him from doing so under its “fair pricing policy.” Even though some competing platforms charge much lower fees, if Steve lowers his prices on another shopping site, Amazon’s algorithms punish him by demoting his products in its search results or making them ineligible for the buybox, which causes his sales to plummet.9 He can’t afford that, and so he inflflates his prices on other sites to match those on Amazon.