I'm still not understanding the distinction here. Costco and Amazon both sell company-brand products, alongside non-company products. Costco and Amazon collect and analyze sales data from the sale of both company and non-company products.
Costco can determine that Best Brand shoes sell in its stores and decide to source shoes themselves and stop carrying Best Brand.
Amazon can determine that the Footlocker in their mall is making a killing selling Best Brand shoes and either sell Best Brand shoes in their anchor store or source their own shoes, all at a price that Footlocker can’t match. They can also advertise those shoes throughout their mall and change the layout so customers have to walk past their cheaper shoes to get to the Footlocker.
None of what you've described about Amazon differentiates it from Costco at all.
Space is at a premium with a physical location, so the likelihood of an actual store exploiting that is extremely unlikely
Your logic is backwards - when space is at a premium, making the most profit off each item in that space is critical. It makes more sense for Costco to do this than it does for Amazon, not less.
The only end-goal that would actually solve the problem fairly is if companies couldn't sell first-party products (or products from a partner where they have a vested interest in) in their store. If you just take care of the one company, you end up with other companies doing the same thing in 20 years like how iOS still has a default music player when MS got burnt for that with having a default browser.
When Costco decides to make a store brand alternative they are using sales data for things they have sold in their store. Amazon is using data for things other people have sold. Amazon is not doing what Costco does.
It's not like Amazon sees sales data from someone's shopify site if people choose to sell on both brand.com and amazon.com.
Costco pays for the items that appear on its shelves (excepting the <1% of goods that are on a consignment basis, usually new trial products). The distributor of the store brand and the name brand have already been paid for the products (and are usually the same company).
Amazon gets paid by the distributors (aka third party sellers) on Amazon.com for handling their sales (even in instances where it is not handling fulfillment), while also competing against them. That is where the anticompetitive concerns arise.
If Amazon just sold stuff through the Amazon.com seller, and didn't have third-party sellers, (or if it operated a separate website for third party sellers) that would be fine.
Effectively the difference in practice is a matter of financing and grain of operation - older retail would gain more and give no extra to upfront sales of say toliet paper after a demand spike raised prices while Amazon would give them a per sale percentage cut.
At what point does own involvement in consignment sales models become not fine? If it works at 1% consignment. Is it 25%? 50%? 75%? 90%? Or more likely it doesn't exist because the whole concept is a fabrication that pays no attention to real law and operates in the court of public opinion to push their bullshit which wouldn't even need a defendant motion before winding up dismissed by a judge because they cannot point to any real laws?
Also, Amazon does not give a per sale cut of the percentage, nor would they, since that's not how consignment works. Consignment goods are still sold at retail price; the only difference is that the supplier only gets paid for goods that sold. They don't get to share in the (additional) profits if the retailer (aka "Amazon.com")charges more due to spiking prices.
Amazon is much more like a digital mall in that they rent out their store features for sellers.
However, Amazon would like to be seen by the customer as Costco and this causes dissonance between how they treat sellers, and how they treat customers.
In both cases, they still use the sales data available to them to create and sell their own products at the expense of third party sellers. In Amazon's case, that means diverting customers away from third party listings to their own. In Costco's case, that means making fewer purchases from third party sellers because the amount of shelf space available decreases as Costco puts more of its own products out.
The type of sales relationship that they have with third party sellers doesn't change the fact that both are using sales data to create and sell their own products at the expense of those third parties.
Costco doesn't have any third party sellers. Costco is the only seller.
That the defining feature mate!
Getting paid an extra to provide premium service to a customer is normal in some areas, but it's a crime of you hold public office.
There are no third party sellers at Costco, it’s only Costco.
Costco purchases the items from the suppliers, generally. They then resell them to you for a markup.
With few exceptions, every single item in Costco is sold by the first party seller: Costco. So my point stands: third party sellers are generally not a part of the Costco experience.
Generally, for the sales you have described, the consignment sales are paired with marketing efforts by the distributor to demonstrate customer interest. If the test succeeds, the store will purchase future lots from the distributor. If the test does not, the product disappears from the shelves and the distributor stops selling it.
If you pick up a random item in Costco, it’s paid for and sold by Costco.
The difference really comes down to three things: the layer on which the competition occurs, whose data is being used, and whether the competition is fair (which comes down to risk/reward).
At Costco, the competition occurs between manufacturers. Costco uses its own retail data as a retailer. The risk to the vendor to sell at Costco is marginal (even if they have to pay for shelf space) compared to being in the market at all. Costco can compete with a store brand, but if they want to sell the vendors products they have to go to the vendor. They can't undercut the vendor with an equivalent product unless they make an equivalent product for cheaper. The risk is spread out and Costco owns a healthy amount of it.
At Amazon, the competition occurs between retailers. Amazon uses its competitors data, which it gains by being a 'marketplace'. The other retailer carries all the risks associated with being a retailer. Amazon takes a piece of it, the size of which depends on what 'services' the retailer uses through Amazon's marketplace. If the retailer fails, Amazon loses nothing. If the retailer wins, Amazon can use the retailers' data and begin selling the same product. It can use its size and the retailers' own numbers to get a better deal with the vendor and undercut the other retailers price on the same exact product. (Store brands are also an option and an issue, but if you're focused on that, you're missing the forest for the trees.) The retailer takes the vast majority of the risk, but Amazon can, at its option, swoop in and take the majority of the reward.
It's similar, although personally I think the relationship between the companies is meaningfully different:
Costco purchases product from manufacturers, and may choose to source product from other manufacturers (including under its own brand name). It uses it's own sales data to make this decision.
Amazon acts as a marketplace for other businesses to list and sell their own products. These businesses are online retailers which use the Amazon platform, and pay Amazon fees for this service. Amazon is then using other retailers sales data in order to inform it's own business.
The difference is with Costco it is their own sales data, while in Amazon it is the sales data of other retailers. It would be an issue if Walmart had access to Costco's sales data and not visa-versa (this would provide Walmart with an unfair competitive advantage). Similarly other smaller online retailers do not get access to Amazon's sales data, but Amazon get's access to the other retailers sales data who use their platform, and will then use this to compete with them.
Plus, walmart is now a marketplace as well. This overpriced GPU is 'Sold & shipped by Monoprice Inc'. It's only a matter of time before Walmart commits the same anticompetitive acts as Amazon using Marketplace data. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Zotac-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3080-Gra...
In the current scenario someone else sells things on Amazon and is taking the risk that the item they're selling will not sell well. If the item is a hit, Amazon swoops in and starts selling it themselves or possibly makes a competitor and sells it themselves. Either way, Amazon reduces their own risk of selling poorly performing products while also cutting into the upside for the vendor who took that risk when they are successful.
Edit: I forgot to mention above that the people taking this risk are paying Amazon to do so.
With the Costco example, Costco as a retailer holds power over their product suppliers. If they are making an own brand, what they are doing is buying it from another supplier and asking that manufacturer to put their own label on it. These relationships can be anti-competitive and present opportunities for market-abuse, but in a meaningfully different way to the Amazon example.
With the Amazon example, Amazon holds power over other retailers using their platform.
And with the Walmart example you have stated, I do think that suffers from the same problems.
In practice that's not the case at all. Many if not most retailers require suppliers to buy back unsold inventory
This combination basically nets out to be financially the same as pure consignment. They won't pay me for my product until well after it has sold-thru to an end user. Everything that's unsold comes back to me (and they bill me for shipping both ways!) In the meantime, all I have is basically an "IOU" promise to someday pay IF it eventually sells (and they always drag out the payment beyond the already-extended due date).
Also, if I want to be featured in their circular I have to "buy" that just like an ad in a magazine except the retailer will (usually) DFI (deduct from invoice) the "ad" cost, which means they just owe me less (if and when the product sells and they actually pay). The same is true for getting my product displayed on an end cap or with in-store signage.
The big retailers bring in new products to "test" all the time and do so at basically no financial risk to themselves (other than the opportunity cost of the shelf space) while capturing all the sales data.
That's pretty much their business model isn't it? Make money on investing for the days between product sold and payment.
If Amazon carried the entirety of their inventory themselves like Costco or like Walmart used to be (before the expansion of their own online marketplace), it would be a distinctly different situation.
Amazon rents space to merchants where those items are sold through the site for a fee. Amazon is never on the hook for a sale and is basically getting paid to do the market research to set up as a competitor.
Yes, Costco does do some referral sales but I can't think of anything which has gone on to be a Kirkland product.
In one situation you run a stall and buy products from people to sell at that stall. At some point you use what you've learned doing this to sell your own product.
In the other, you don't buy anything from anybody. Instead, you rent out a stall for other people to sell things from. You then watch the stall and use that information to open your own stall.
The first case seems pretty normal to most people, I think. The person you were buying from originally doesn't inherently get some kind of assurance that you will always buy from them in the future. There's no difference to the seller if you buy from somebody else, don't sell any of that product, or make your own. We just don't expect that buying goods from somebody inherently adds any other kind of obligation. It's two equal parties making an exchange, and nothing more.
The second case, however, I think is not so clear cut. All of the sudden you have a lasting relationship between two unequal parties. These are the sorts of situations where you tend to find more implicit or inherent obligations on the participants. It's no longer the guy you sold that thing to not buying from you again, it's your landlord competing with you.
I'm not trying to pick a side here, so much as I am trying to explain why people might not see the two situations as identical. And of course there are plenty of real-world complications too.