As some of you might no doubt be aware, Amazon has its own lineup of Amazon-branded products under its AmazonBasics lineup. This ranges from all kinds of things like monitor arms, pouches to carry your cables, and so on. We imagine that Amazon has their own procedures on how they decide whether or not to make a product or enter a product category, but now we know at least one of those methods.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, it appears that some Amazon employees and company executives have actually been mining third-party seller data. By using this information, it has reportedly helped them to create their products, as well as help them make decisions on whether or not they should enter a new product category.
This is done by studying the sales, marketing spending, and Amazon’s own share of sales to arrive at those decisions. It should be noted that Amazon has policies in place that forbid the company from using data from their sellers, but the report claims that employees and executives would find workarounds, such as by asking analysts to create reports or aggregating data.
Amazon has since respond to the report by reiterating that they “strictly prohibit” workers from using seller information to design Amazon-branded products, and that they have since launched an internal investigation into the matter.