EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Amazon Monopoly: Is Amazon’s Private Label Business the Tipping Point?

Emily Faherty, Kevin Huang and Robert Land

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to consider if Amazon’s increase in private label brands is the tipping point for transforming the e-commerce giant into a monopoly. To lay the foundation, we initially explore the culture, leadership, and business practices which are unique to Amazon that enabled the company to become one of the U.S.’s largest and fastest growing e-commerce websites. Introduced in 2009, Amazon’s private label business has further propelled Amazon’s growth while creating a competitive advantage for the company by offering high quality products to their customers at low cost options. In considering whether private label brands affect Amazon’s status as a monopoly, we first examine exactly what a monopoly is and if Amazon can be classified as one in its current state. We then take a deep dive into Amazon’s private label strategy, analyzing past performance to make educated assumptions about the future. Our research provided evidence indicating that Amazon’s actions are threatening the cooperative nature of its Marketplace by creating substantial barriers to entry and increasing Amazon’s market share. With this knowledge we make predictions about Amazon’s future and whether it will ever be seen as a monopoly under the economic, legal, and/or social definitions. While Amazon’s case is unprecedented, this paper sources leading economists, journalists, and other academic research to support our theory.

Keywords: amazon; monopoly; amazon marketplace; private label; store brand; jeff bezos; white label; consumer protection; sherman act; anti-trust; clayton act; hart-scott-rodino; federal trade commission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D4 D40 D42 D43 D44 D47 D5 K21 K23 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ind, nep-ipr, nep-law and nep-ore
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/83672/1/MPRA_paper_83672.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:83672

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:83672