Inside Amazon's Secret Operation To Gather Intel on Rivals (wsj.com) 17
Amazon staff went undercover on Walmart, eBay and other marketplaces as a third-party seller called "Big River," WSJ reports. The mission: to scoop up information on pricing, logistics and other business practices. From the report: For nearly a decade, workers in a warehouse in Seattle's Denny Triangle neighborhood have shipped boxes of shoes, beach chairs, Marvel T-shirts and other items to online retail customers across the U.S. The operation, called Big River Services International, sells around $1 million a year of goods through e-commerce marketplaces including eBay, Shopify, Walmart and Amazon under brand names such as Rapid Cascade and Svea Bliss. "We are entrepreneurs, thinkers, marketers and creators," Big River says on its website. "We have a passion for customers and aren't afraid to experiment."
What the website doesn't say is that Big River is an arm of Amazon that surreptitiously gathers intelligence on the tech giant's competitors. Born out of a 2015 plan code named "Project Curiosity," Big River uses its sales across multiple countries to obtain pricing data, logistics information and other details about rival e-commerce marketplaces, logistics operations and payments services, according to people familiar with Big River and corporate documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The team then shared that information with Amazon to incorporate into decisions about its own business.
[...] The story of Big River offers new insight into Amazon's elaborate efforts to stay ahead of rivals. Team members attended their rivals' seller conferences and met with competitors identifying themselves only as employees of Big River Services, instead of disclosing that they worked for Amazon. They were given non-Amazon email addresses to use externally -- in emails with people at Amazon, they used Amazon email addresses -- and took other extraordinary measures to keep the project secret. They disseminated their reports to Amazon executives using printed, numbered copies rather than email. Those who worked on the project weren't even supposed to discuss the relationship internally with most teams at Amazon.
What the website doesn't say is that Big River is an arm of Amazon that surreptitiously gathers intelligence on the tech giant's competitors. Born out of a 2015 plan code named "Project Curiosity," Big River uses its sales across multiple countries to obtain pricing data, logistics information and other details about rival e-commerce marketplaces, logistics operations and payments services, according to people familiar with Big River and corporate documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The team then shared that information with Amazon to incorporate into decisions about its own business.
[...] The story of Big River offers new insight into Amazon's elaborate efforts to stay ahead of rivals. Team members attended their rivals' seller conferences and met with competitors identifying themselves only as employees of Big River Services, instead of disclosing that they worked for Amazon. They were given non-Amazon email addresses to use externally -- in emails with people at Amazon, they used Amazon email addresses -- and took other extraordinary measures to keep the project secret. They disseminated their reports to Amazon executives using printed, numbered copies rather than email. Those who worked on the project weren't even supposed to discuss the relationship internally with most teams at Amazon.
Hardly surprising and not the worst offender (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting, not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not surprising that Amazon is looking into other market places and whatnot. You'd expect just about all companies to have a "market intelligence" capability of some sort, be that their own people or hiring consultancies to do it.
What's interesting is the scale - presumably they're buying and selling actual products, with some sort of margin between. If they're doing so at a super-low margin (to gain volume), and are being propped up by Amazon, perhaps via fees for the insights they provide, then there's room to consider this an anti-trust/anti-competitive move. That is, Amazon (the marketplace) is using its size to muscle out actual vendors in that marketplace (and in fact other people's marketplaces, as Big River sells elsewhere too) by putting its own vendor in there.
If Big River has bigger margins (so not directly being propped up by Amazon), then how are they selling so much? Is it perhaps that amazon favours their products in search results over their rivals? If so, then there are more anti-trust issues to unpick.
My guess is they're hoping that the US powers-that-be won't do too much about this. If Big River were crazy enough to have an EU presence, then it's likely to get shot down pretty soon.
Sneaky Sneaky! (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't sound illegal. Barely nefarious maybe? Really smart probably? I'll wager that Walmart and eBay pretended to be Amazon Marketplace sellers at some point. Automakers buy each other's cars to tear them apart and study them. So do makers of electronics. In fact, in probably every competitive marketplace, the participants do this. It's just a sneaky way of learning from each other (going hand-in-hand with poaching each other's top people). I once worked for an electronics company that did this. We had the competitor's product shipped to the home address of the VP's assistant. And that was 40 years ago.
They werenâ(TM)t trying very hard to hide the (Score:2)
âoeBig River Servicesâ? Come on guys, thats not hard to figure out :)
Re: (Score:2)
But what of it?
If you're not watching your competition at all levels, you're not doing it right. The reality of retail has always been dog-eat-dog. Can they do it better?
Let's look at the proof. Yes, powerfully successful, but they suck at so many things. They mis-deliver. They have a product search engine from hell itself. They fake their reviews-- or permit them. They screw their partners with a smile.
Intelligence is one thing, execution another.
Re: They werenâ(TM)t trying very hard to hide (Score:2)
Misguided (Score:3)
Amazon is misguided here, if they are to spy on someone, they should spy on Temu, because Temu is eating their lunch.
Nothing new (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"Why is this even a story?"
All of the examples you cite involve actual market prices.
The problem with Amazon's scheme is that they have no incentive to price their products according to an actual supply curve. They are undermining the pricing efficiency of markets, and any actual capitalist should be opposed.
Re: (Score:3)
Grocery stores hire mystery shoppers to buy things at competitors and gather pricing data. Chefs are known to eat at their competitors' restaurants. Every automaker either buys their competitors' cars to tear down, or purchases detailed reports from third parties. Anyone in a retail context would be stupid not to gather such information. And you can bet that WalMart, etc., have their own teams doing the same thing. By and large, we're talking about public information (or at least unprivileged). Why is this even a story?
This strikes me as the morality brigade getting a bit too big for their britches. I'm in the cabinet industry. Cabinets, for the most part, haven't had any major breakthroughs in development for a very, very long time. Frameless would probably be the last one, and that's already old hat. But yet, competition is fierce enough that there are constant strategies for grabbing competitors catalogs, getting ahold of their products to handle them and make sure we're still competitive ourselves, and reps sailing ot
Oh the irony... (Score:1)
Wall Street's Journal's page "Inside Amazon’s Secret Operation to Gather Intel on Rivals" runs JavaScript from amazon-adsystem.com.
The Amazing Part (Score:2)
The amazing part of this is that, with a name like "Big River," the rivals being investigated didn't figure out what was going on. They practically announced what they were doing!
Re: (Score:2)
Just as obvious as "Big Woman" or Big Snake".
Very subtle (Score:2)
Keep your friends close, but competitors closer? (Score:2)