Founder and CEO Jason Boyce is a stand-out contributor to this article on Wired about the anti-trust lawsuit filed on Tuesday.
Jason Boyce, another longtime Amazon seller turned consultant, explained to me how this works. He and his partners were excited when the last third-party seller contract they signed with Amazon, to sell sporting goods on the site, didn’t include the price parity provision. “We thought, ‘This is great! We can offer discounts on Walmart, and Sears, and wherever else,’” he said. But then something odd happened. Boyce (who spoke with House investigators as part of the antitrust inquiry) noticed that once his company lowered prices on other sites, sales on Amazon started tanking. “We went to the listing, and the Add to Cart button was gone, the Buy Now button was gone. Instead, there was a gray box labeled ‘See All Buying Options.’ You could still buy the product, but it was an extra click. Now, an extra click on Amazon is an eternity—they’re all about immediate gratification.” Moreover, his company’s ad spending plummeted, which he realized was because Amazon doesn’t show users ads for products without a Buy Box. “So what did we do? We went back and raised our prices everywhere else, and within 24 hours everything came back. Traffic improved, clicks improved, and sales came back.”
