It is less than 30 days before Prime Day. According to the practice of Prime Day every year, Amazon will do several things: (1) Rectify the violations of third-party sellers, such as: abuse of evaluation; (2) Launch new services or system functions ; (3) Announced to the public to refresh the sales record again.
Undoubtedly, this is a big test for sellers in the middle of each year, but before this year's Prime Day, Amazon will also usher in a big test about its own destiny – it can be said that the antitrust law S. 2992, which is specially tailored for Amazon, is very likely Effective at the end of this month.
Regarding Amazon's recent censorship of review abuse, we shared with you two weeks ago. Recently, people have asked us more about whether the anti-monopoly law, which will be finalized at the end of June, will force Amazon to break up. Therefore, in today's article, we will focus on the impact on Amazon and Chinese sellers once the antitrust law is passed, as well as the latest new advertising features launched by Amazon to conduct in-depth analysis with you.
Part I: U.S. Antitrust Law and the S. 2992 Act
The United States is a country that takes capitalism to the extreme, creating countless business elites and global giants here. However, we can also see that the American judicial system may be a sword hanging over the capital of all American oligarchs.
The U.S. antitrust law was passed in 1890 to prevent a company from growing indefinitely without restraint, ultimately to the detriment of every citizen, other companies, and the U.S. national interest. The case we are more familiar with is that the Bell Telephone Company in the United States was under antitrust investigation by the US government in 1907 due to its monopoly on almost all US telephony and telephone services, and was finally ruled by the US court in 1982, Bell was forced to be split into Bell and AT&T and several different companies by other businesses. Although AT&T is still the #1 largest telecommunications company in the United States, it can no longer be called "one-handed".
The other is the familiar Microsoft. Under the leadership of Bill Gates, Microsoft's Windows system has almost monopolized the US computer system in less than 20 years, which has also attracted the attention of the US Congress and antitrust investigation of Microsoft. . In 2001, after Microsoft donated huge campaign funds to then-President Bush, the US government and Microsoft reached a settlement on the antitrust investigation on the condition that Bill Gates needs to withdraw from Microsoft completely. Since then, Jobs seized the opportunity to make Apple Computer rise rapidly, and avenged his revenge with Bill Gates.
After reading these two cases, I believe everyone should be clear about the reason why Amazon is so nervous now, because the S. 2992 Act, which is being considered by the US Congress at this moment, is likely to have a huge impact on Amazon's existing business. It is for this reason that Amazon's vice president Daimash sent an open letter to all sellers in the US market (you can see it in your seller center), hoping that sellers in the US can support Amazon and oppose the passage of this bill.
However, the letter appears to have had the opposite effect, as more and more U.S. sellers are starting to publicly support the passage of S. 2992 and want to rein in Amazon. Judging from the current situation, Huiwang feels that this bill is likely to be passed within 2 weeks.
Part II: Impact of S. 2992 on Chinese Sellers
The full name of S. 2992 is The American Innovation and Choice Online (AICO), which can be understood in Chinese as: American Innovation and Online Platform Fair Conduct Act
Now let's take a look at what this law actually says, and whether it will bring advantages or disadvantages to every seller and Chinese seller.
First, Amazon believes the law is tailor-made for itself and extremely unfair. The actual situation may be half of this. As Amazon said in the email, no retail giants such as Walmart and Target were included in the legal review. But at the same time, the law also specifically targets three companies, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Google.
Second, the law’s antitrust investigations on these platforms mainly focus on the following five aspects:
S. 2992 Scope of Amazon Censorship
1. Promote your own products more by harming the commercial interests of competitors on your own platform
2. Deliberately put competitors' products/services at a disadvantage on their platform
3. Use the data left by third-party customers/merchants on your platform to give your products an unfair advantage
4. Put pressure on third-party sellers and control their pricing power
5. For users who report or provide unfavorable information to their platform, they will be suppressed in accordance with the internal policies of the platform
After listening to these 5 points, I believe everyone has the same idea as Hui.com: Thanks to the U.S. Congress and the judiciary for summarizing Amazon's crimes against third-party sellers so incisively!
Later, the bill also clearly stated the penalties for relevant platforms that violated the bill, including:
Amazon faces fines and damages
The relevant platform needs to pay 15% of the total income of the previous financial year as a fine . The relevant platform may also need to pay 30% of the income of the current financial year as a fine . At the same time, the relevant platform also needs to compensate the victim seller/enterprise for all losses
After reading this, I believe you can use two words to describe this bill, and that is "relieving anger"! At the same time, although it will take several years from the introduction of the US bill, to the collection of evidence, and then to its implementation. But I believe that once the bill is passed, Amazon's sales policies for third-party sellers will have a significant impact, including:
S. 2992 Forces Amazon to Remove Site Privileges
Amazon's own brand will lose its traffic advantage, and third-party sellers can sue Amazon's own brand for evaluation violations . Amazon's VC account will likely be subject to greater restrictions, such as colluding with listings, selling in the name of Amazon, and unfair on-site activities Advantages such as declaration will be lost Amazon's brand plan, as well as a series of special seller account privileges that give Amazon the advantage of bargaining and brand acquisition will be suspended Amazon's internal platform policy that prohibits direct contact/communication between sellers and buyers will be forced to cancel In short, In the future, the Amazon platform will become more fair because of this bill . In addition, the bill does not involve forcing Amazon to split its existing business, or split it into different companies, nor does it discriminate against Chinese/overseas sellers
Part 3: Amazon native ads make the giants more competitive
According to Chinese culture and customs, we all believe that peace is a blessing, and that more things are worse than less things. Therefore, when it comes to bills, laws, and lawsuits, it is considered a bad thing.
However, everyone also needs to know that in the West, especially the United States, people who are afraid of things are regarded as cowards, and the development of almost every American company and individual develops in almost every day disputes, prosecutions, and prosecutions.
It is also when the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress are discussing this antitrust law that is almost tailor-made for Amazon, Amazon is planning the next big plan (Big Thing). And this time, his opponent is not a third-party seller, but Meta (Facebook), which is also affected by this bill. The plan is: localized advertising!
We've mentioned several times in this year's article that globalization has come to an end, whether we admit it or not. Future trade will be more regionalized, localized, not globalized. Because of this, we see more and more domestic trading companies move their factories to Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Mexico. The business department was set up in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, and it began to expand the market in combination with offline physical stores. Maybe Amazon sees this trend too, so it's about to roll out "native ads."
In fact, the Huiwang Smart Camp project is already running local ads on Facebook, Instagram and Google for several Chinese companies that have settled in the United States and Canada. We can clearly see that native ads have very low CPCs, rapid organic rankings, and higher customer engagement and conversion rates!
At present, there is not much information on the Amazon project to be announced to the public, but we believe that this market will be another market where Amazon, Google and Facebook will fight, and this market will also be a must for far-sighted Chinese foreign trade and e-commerce companies. place!
Introduction to the Smart Camp Project of Huiwang Independent Station (please contact the author of the article for consultation)
Create a professional website for personalized orders Produce professional guidance videos through Huiwang AI , put on Facebook, Instagram, Google ads, provide overseas professional customer service calls
Introduction of Huiwang Amazon Smart Camp Project (a small number of monthly paid places are available in June, please contact the author of the article for consultation)
Precise selection, copywriting, picture design, video production, A+ graphic and text , in-site advertising
Let your team focus more on strengths, and let Huiwang AI do harder work