I'm trying to understand the rationale behind this bill too, and could only think of one counter-position.
I think it might come down to aggregated unit costs and target customers.
Its possible that Amazon's private label is primarily used by customers for low-cost items comprising lower expected quality and primarily non-perishables/non-consumables (for ex. cellphone chargers that are lost every 3 months). There's typically a lower opportunity cost to alternatives, thereby bullying out competition from SMBs who can't capitalize through quality.
If you compare that to Target's Room Essentials brand, for instance, the private label almost targets (pun intended) a certain audience that has lower purchasing power and quality expectation - college students. However, Room Essentials wouldn't monopolize over vendors and SMBs because of the existence of a wider market reach that involves consumers holding higher purchasing power and hunting for quality and uniqueness.
Would be interesting to see more refined data on the categories of items sold by various private labels compared with unit costs and perhaps volume.
I'm trying to understand the rationale behind this bill too, and could only think of one counter-position.
I think it might come down to aggregated unit costs and target customers.
Its possible that Amazon's private label is primarily used by customers for low-cost items comprising lower expected quality and primarily non-perishables/non-consumables (for ex. cellphone chargers that are lost every 3 months). There's typically a lower opportunity cost to alternatives, thereby bullying out competition from SMBs who can't capitalize through quality.
If you compare that to Target's Room Essentials brand, for instance, the private label almost targets (pun intended) a certain audience that has lower purchasing power and quality expectation - college students. However, Room Essentials wouldn't monopolize over vendors and SMBs because of the existence of a wider market reach that involves consumers holding higher purchasing power and hunting for quality and uniqueness.
Would be interesting to see more refined data on the categories of items sold by various private labels compared with unit costs and perhaps volume.