YCD News — In a recent antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claimed that Amazon prevents Walmart from outcompeting itself in the e-commerce space by penalizing third-party sellers for offering lower prices on other platforms in order to maintain a competitive advantage.
According to the FTC’s latest claim, in addition to earning $1 billion by pushing U.S. households to pay higher prices for items through a secret algorithm called Project Nessie, Amazon allegedly “prevented its platform sellers from operating in the Walmart marketplace,” according to the FTC. “.
Founded in 2014, Jet.com, backed by Walmart, has become a formidable foe for Amazon, which began monitoring sellers due to concerns about declining sales and removing sellers’ offers from the Buy Box (prime shopping cart) if Amazon found sellers were offering lower-priced products on Jet.com, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said.
AMZ123 learned that in 2016, Walmart purchased Jet.com for $3 billion and began to power the e-commerce market. Unlike most e-commerce platforms that emphasize speed of delivery, Jet.com is committed to providing consumers with goods close to cost price.
Like Amazon, Walmart operates third-party online marketplaces that offer items from thousands of independent sellers. And, both Walmart and Amazon charge fees and commissions to merchants on their platforms.
In its lawsuit against Amazon, the Federal Trade Commission alleges that in an effort to undercut Jet.com, Amazon removed some third-party sellers’ offers from its Buy Box.
In addition, the suit quotes one Amazon seller as saying that due to pressure from Amazon, he adopted a policy of ensuring that products would not be priced lower on Walmart than on Amazon.
The FTC also noted that Amazon also deployed what the FTC called an anti-competitive algorithm against Jet.com’s most popular products, causing Jet.com to be forced to adjust its strategy to match the lowest prices on other sites.
Notably, Walmart shut down Jet.com in 2020 due to low sales and a protracted failure to turn a profit.In response to the FTC’s claims, Walmart declined to comment.