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.