Amazon reportedly pulled data from third-party sellers to create private-label products.
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Amazon employees used data on independent sellers on its platform to launch competing products, according to a Thursday report by The Wall Street Journal. This practice conflicts with claims by the e-commerce giant that it doesn’t use information collected from third-party sellers when developing its own products, the report says.
The information collected by Amazon can reportedly help the company determine pricing, which features to replicate or whether to get involved in a product category. The Journal spoke with more than 20 former employees of the company’s private-label business and accessed documents allegedly outlining the practices.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Examples of this practice reportedly include Amazon employees accessing data about a top selling trunk organizer from a third-party vendor, including total sales and the amount Amazon made on every sale. The company’s private-label business then rolled out its own trunk organizers.
“Like other retailers, we look at sales and store data to provide our customers with the best possible experience,” Amazon told the Journal in a statement. “However, we strictly prohibit our employees from using nonpublic, seller-specific data to determine which private label products to launch.”
The company noted that employees using data to do what the publication described would go against its policies, and that it’s launching an internal investigation.