Maxi fine ofAntitrust Italian for Amazon. And of 1.1 billion euros the sanction decided by the Antitrust Authority against the companies Amazon Europe Core, Amazon Services Europe, Amazon, Amazon Italia Services and Amazon Italia Logistica for violation of art. 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the one that prohibits “it abusive exploitation by one or more companies of one dominant position on the internal market or on a substantial part of it “. Amazon, for the Authority, holds a position of absolute dominance in the Italian market for brokerage services on the marketplace, which has allowed it to favor their own logistics service, named Fulfillment by Amazon (Fulfillment by Amazon), from active sellers on the Amazon.it platform to the detriment of competing operators and to strengthen its dominant position.
According to the Authority, the companies have linked to the use of the FBA service access to a set of essential benefits for gaining visibility and better sales prospects on Amazon.co.uk. Among these exclusive advantages, the label stands out Prime, which allows vsell more easily to the most loyal consumers and with greater spending capacity by joining the Amazon loyalty program. The Prime label also allows you to attend special events managed by Amazon, such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Prime Day and it increases the likelihood that the seller’s offer is selected as Featured offer and displayed in the so-called Buy Box. Amazon has thus prevented third-party sellers from associating the Prime label with offers not managed with FBA.
The investigation ascertained that these are functionality of the Amazon.it platform crucial for the success of the sellers and for the increase of their sales. Finally, the stringent system of performance measurementand which Amazon submits to non-FBA sellers and failure to pass can also lead to suspension of the seller’s account. In tal modo Amazon ha damaged competing e-commerce logistics operators, preventing them from proposing themselves to online sellers as suppliers of services of a quality comparable to that of Amazon’s logistics. These conducts have thus increased the gap between the power of Amazon and that of the competition also in the e-commerce order delivery business. Furthermore, as a result of the abuse, competing marketplaces were also damaged: due to the cost of duplication of warehouses, sellers who adopt Amazon logistics are discouraged from offering their products on other online platforms, at least with the same breadth of range. The Authority considered this abusive strategy to be particularly serious and, also in consideration of its duration, the effects already produced and the size of the group, decided to impose a fine of over € 1 billion.
In order to immediately restore competitive conditions in the relevant markets, the Antitrust has imposed measures on Amazon that will be subjected to the scrutiny of a monitoring trustee. It will have to grant all sales and visibility privileges on its platform to all third-party sellers who know how to respect fair and non-discriminatory standards for the fulfillment of their orders, in line with the level of service that Amazon intends to guarantee Prime consumers. Amazon will have to define and publish these standards and, starting one year from the decision, refrain from negotiating with the carriers and / or competing logistics operators – on behalf of the sellers – rates and other contractual conditions applied for the logistics of their orders on Amazon. it, outside of Fba.
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