Bye-box: An Analysis of Non-Promotion on the Amazon Marketplace 03.06.2022

Matthias Hunold (), Ulrich Laitenberger and Guillaume Thébaudin ()
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Matthias Hunold: University of Siegen = Universität Siegen [Siegen]
Guillaume Thébaudin: ECO-Télécom Paris - Equipe Eco Economie - I3 SES - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation de Telecom Paris - Télécom Paris - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, SES - Département Sciences Economiques et Sociales - Télécom Paris - IMT - Institut Mines-Télécom [Paris] - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris

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Abstract: We study seller and product recommendations of the hybrid e-commerce platform Amazon. Using web-scraped data, we find that Amazon makes the visibility of offers of third-party suppliers in the "buybox" dependent on prices on competing marketplaces like Walmart and eBay. Amazon's own offers are visible regardless of their competitiveness. We find that the absence of seller recommendations makes recommendations to related products more effective and Amazon tends to steer consumers in these situations more often to products it sells itself. We discuss that this behavior is difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis of an independent marketplace operator.

Keywords: Amazon marketplace buybox self-preferencing algorithm bias recommendation algorithms D40 L42 L81; Amazon marketplace; buybox; self-preferencing; algorithm bias; recommendation algorithms D40; L42; L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-06-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-pay
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