Amazon Owns the Marketplace — And Is Your Competitor
Imagine renting a store inside a massive shopping mall.
The mall owner owns the building, decides where customer traffic flows, determines which stores appear in the best locations, sells you advertising space and sets the rules that determine who reaches the main entrance.
Then one day, you discover that the mall owner also owns a store competing with you in the same category.
That is roughly the problem that makes a question like:
“Does Amazon favor its own products?”
more complicated than a simple question about ranking.
Amazon is not just the place where you sell.
It operates the Marketplace and controls much of the infrastructure that determines search visibility, the Buy Box or Featured Offer, Sponsored Ads, Prime, fulfillment, pricing rules and platform fees.
At the same time, it operates Amazon Retail and sells its own products or products it purchases directly inside the same marketplace.
In other words:
You are not only competing with other sellers. In some cases, you may also be competing with the company that runs the playing field.
You Are Not Only Competing on Product — You Are Competing for Visibility
On Amazon, having a good product does not mean the customer will see it.
Before customers can compare the price, images, reviews or specifications, the product first has to reach them.
That is where the real competition begins.
Who appears at the top of search results? Who wins the Featured Offer? Who can use advertising efficiently? What price does the platform consider appropriate? Which offer receives Prime eligibility? And how much do you have to pay to get traffic?
None of these things exist outside Amazon.
They are parts of the system Amazon itself operates.
That is why, when the company controlling search, the Buy Box, advertising and the Marketplace also participates as a seller, the potential conflict of interest becomes a real commercial question — not merely a legal debate.
And Sellers Did Not Invent This Question
In November 2020, the European Commission announced concerns about Amazon’s use of non-public data from independent sellers and opened another investigation concerning the criteria used to select the Buy Box and Prime offers.
Then, in December 2022, the Commission accepted commitments from Amazon and made them legally binding.
Those commitments included restrictions on the use of certain non-public seller data for the benefit of Amazon Retail, equal treatment of all sellers when ranking offers for Buy Box selection, and changes related to Prime and logistics.
[European Commission, 2020] [European Commission, 2022]
A seller does not need to read hundreds of pages of antitrust law to understand why this matters.
If a regulator had to impose commitments concerning seller data, the Buy Box and Prime, the question of Amazon’s dual role as both platform operator and commercial participant is not theoretical.
What About Search Ranking? This Is Where the Story Gets More Interesting
In April 2024, an NBER study analyzed more than 8 million search results across 22 different Amazon domains.
After controlling for a range of product characteristics, researcher Joel Waldfogel found that Amazon’s own products appeared, on average, around 24 positions higher in search results within the sample.
He also found that the gap declined after Amazon was designated as a gatekeeper in the European Union.
[NBER Working Paper 32299, 2024]
The study does not mean an Amazon employee is sitting at a desk pressing a button that says:
“Move Amazon Basics higher.”
But it does mean something extremely important for sellers:
The question of whether there is a systematic visibility advantage can be measured — and data has found a real ranking difference.
For a seller dependent on organic traffic, 24 positions is not an academic issue.
It can be the difference between the page the customer sees and the page the customer never reaches.
The Problem Is Not Limited to Amazon’s Own Products
This is where many sellers make a mistake.
They assume the issue matters only if they compete directly with Amazon Basics or another Amazon private-label brand.
But the conflict is much broader.
Even when there is no Amazon-owned product directly competing with yours, you still depend on a system controlled by an organization that manages:
- Search ranking
- Buy Box / Featured Offer
- Advertising
- Prime eligibility
- Fulfillment
- Pricing signals
- Marketplace fees
- Visibility rules
In other words, Amazon does not have to sell the exact same product to influence the economics of the product you sell.
Germany Provided a Clear Example: Price Can Become a Visibility Problem
In June 2025, Germany’s Bundeskartellamt published a preliminary legal assessment concerning what it described as price control mechanisms used in Amazon Marketplace.
The German authority pointed out that Amazon operates in the market in two ways at the same time:
Amazon Retail on one side and the Marketplace for third-party sellers on the other.
According to the preliminary assessment, offers that Amazon’s systems consider too expensive may face consequences such as exclusion from the Buy Box, reduced visibility in search results or restrictions on advertising.
This is where the commercial problem becomes obvious.
If the platform determines how your offer appears while simultaneously competing with some sellers through Amazon Retail, visibility and pricing rules are not merely technical settings inside a dashboard.
They are part of the competition itself.
This is particularly important in Germany, where the Bundeskartellamt estimated that amazon.de represents around 60% of online retail sales of goods in the country.
When a channel is that large, losing visibility inside it is not a minor detail.
Then Came the Digital Markets Act
In September 2023, the European Union designated Amazon as a gatekeeper for Amazon Marketplace and Amazon Advertising.
The relevant DMA obligations began applying in March 2024.
That same month, the European Commission said it was taking investigatory steps to assess whether Amazon’s treatment of its own-brand products inside the Amazon Store complied with the DMA’s self-preferencing rules.
[European Commission — DMA] [European Commission, 25 Mar 2024]
In July 2025, the Commission formally said it was still examining potential self-preferencing practices on Amazon Marketplace and gathering information and evidence from the market.
[European Commission answer, 2025]
For sellers, the important point is not memorizing the names of the laws.
The important point is that the question itself reached a level where European regulators began requesting data and examining how the platform treats its own products inside the marketplace.
In the United States, the Conflict Reached the Courts
In September 2023, the FTC initially filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon together with 17 state attorneys general.
The case includes allegations concerning how Amazon uses its power in online marketplace and online superstore services.
Amazon rejected the allegations and argued that the practices challenged by the FTC helped lower prices, increase selection and improve service for sellers and customers.
[FTC, 2023] [Amazon response, 2023]
As of September 3, 2026, the main case has not yet gone to trial, and the court trial is currently scheduled for March 29, 2027.
[U.S. District Court scheduling order]
For sellers, however, the main issue is not waiting for a court to tell them how to operate their businesses.
The issue is understanding the reality in front of them today.
So, Does Amazon Favor Its Own Products?
You do not need a slogan such as:
“Amazon always cheats.”
And you also do not need to assume that the Marketplace is a perfectly neutral playing field that behaves like a spreadsheet.
What we know is this:
There were European concerns involving seller data, the Buy Box and Prime that resulted in legally binding commitments.
There is ongoing European scrutiny of potential self-preferencing.
A large study found that Amazon’s own products appeared around 24 positions higher on average within its sample after controlling for various product characteristics.
And German competition authorities are examining how pricing rules can affect the Buy Box, search visibility and advertising inside a marketplace in which Amazon itself also participates as a seller.
That is enough to understand the point that matters to sellers:
Amazon is not simply a channel that connects you with the customer. It is also the organization that designs many of the rules determining how you reach that customer.
And in some categories, it is also your competitor.
When You Sell on Amazon, You Do Not Own the Road to the Customer
This may be the most important point in the entire article.
You can own:
the brand. the product. the inventory. the design. the patent. the reviews. and the ASIN.
But the road between you and the customer still runs through a platform you do not own.
If CPC changes, your margin changes.
If you lose the Buy Box, your sales change.
If ranking changes, your traffic changes.
If Prime or fulfillment conditions change, your conversion economics change.
If pricing rules change, the visibility of the offer itself may change.
That is why complete dependence on Amazon is not merely channel dependency.
It is dependence on a system in which the other party has substantial power to change the cost of reaching the customer.
The Best Product in the Market Can Lose If Nobody Sees It
This idea connects directly to what happens on Amazon every day.
The seller focuses on:
“My product is better.”
But the market does not reward the theoretically best product.
It rewards the product that reaches the customer, convinces them, gets clicks, converts into sales and remains capable of buying or earning visibility.
An excellent product sitting at position 70 in search results can lose to a weaker product sitting at position 3.
And the difference between the two does not always begin with quality.
It begins with distribution and visibility.
On Amazon, Amazon itself owns the infrastructure that distributes that visibility.
What Should Sellers Do?
The solution is not to leave Amazon.
And the solution is not to turn every ranking loss into a conspiracy theory.
The solution is to manage Amazon as a channel instead of treating it as your entire company.
Monitor Buy Box performance, organic ranking, PPC and conversion separately — not just total sales.
If sales fall by 30%, you should know:
Did traffic disappear? Did CPC increase? Did you lose the Featured Offer? Did conversion fall? Did the price change? Or did the competitor genuinely become stronger?
Calculate profit after advertising, fees, returns and discounts — not revenue alone.
Build brand demand so that at least some customers search directly for your brand name rather than relying entirely on a generic keyword whose distribution is controlled by the platform.
And when it becomes practical, reduce channel dependency through a direct store, distributors, other marketplaces or additional sales channels.
Not because Amazon is bad.
But because building 90% or 100% of your revenue inside a single channel means that any change in that channel immediately becomes a problem for your company.
Conclusion: Amazon Can Be Your Best Sales Channel — and Your Competitor at the Same Time
Amazon gives sellers something that is extremely difficult to build from scratch:
millions of customers, logistics infrastructure, payment infrastructure, an advertising system and a marketplace already prepared for buying.
That is exactly what makes it powerful.
But that same power means sellers operate inside a system whose rules they do not control.
And in some cases, the company writing those rules also participates in selling inside the same marketplace.
That is why the real question is not:
“Is Amazon evil or fair?”
The question that matters more to your company is:
What happens to your business if ranking, the Buy Box, advertising costs or visibility rules change tomorrow?
If the answer is:
“Sales stop.”
Then you do not simply own an Amazon business.
You own a business that depends on Amazon.
And there is a major difference between the two.
FAQ
Does Amazon compete with third-party sellers?
Yes. Amazon operates the Marketplace and also operates Amazon Retail, meaning it functions both as a platform and as a commercial participant in parts of the same market.
Has it been proven that Amazon favors its own products in search?
An NBER study analyzing more than 8 million search results found that Amazon’s own products appeared around 24 positions higher on average within its sample after controlling for a range of product characteristics. European authorities also continue to examine potential self-preferencing. This does not mean every Amazon product always receives a better ranking.
What did the European Union do about the Buy Box?
In 2022, the European Commission made commitments offered by Amazon legally binding to address concerns involving seller data, the Buy Box and Prime.
Why should sellers care even if they do not compete with Amazon Basics?
Because Amazon controls key parts of the infrastructure that determine visibility, including search, the Buy Box, advertising, Prime, fulfillment and other rules that directly affect the economics of selling.
Has the FTC lawsuit against Amazon been decided?
No. The case filed in 2023 is still ongoing, and the main trial is currently scheduled for March 29, 2027.