The British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA) has filed a case against Amazon worth £1 billion on behalf of UK retailers for misusing their information illegally and also tampering with the Amazon Buy Box for their own commercial operation and profits. Litigation Capital Management (LCM) is funding this claim and Willkie Farr & Gallagher (UK) LLP, a leading global law firm will be handling the case.
The allegation states that from October 2015 till now Amazon has used non-public data of UK retailers on its portal and has manipulated the Amazon Buy Box for a product entry strategy that led to profits and sales revenues going to Amazon from the retailers. BIRA added that such information lets Amazon decide if it is viable to enter a new product category depending on the sales viability and earnings along with the parts of the product to copy, the target consumers, and pricing of each product. This information along with the Buy Box let Amazon understand which segments would be successful and divert the profits from UK retailers.
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A large number of retailers involved were unaware of their data being used by Amazon for their own retail working. Amazon charged 30% commission on each product sold on the website and as per BIRA, misusing their data to bring on rival brands that are cheaper, it is pushing out many of the independent retailers.
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Rebutting the allegation Amazon said that they are not privy to any such allegation and are certain that the complaints are baseless. The Amazon spokesperson further added that they work with more than 100,000 small and medium sized companies and over 50% of the physical product sales in the UK store are from independent selling partners. Additionally, Amazon only profits when the businesses succeed.
