Global Small Businesses Must Determine Whether Amazon is a Hero or Villain

©iStock/jetcityimage

There are plusses and minuses to selling on Amazon.  Here's a minus.

The e-commerce giant may depend on its merchants in the aggregate, but individually they don’t have much power. Sellers say Amazon effectively punishes them if they’re found offering their items for lower prices on rival sites such as Walmart, dropping them lower in search rankings for instance.

Many feel Amazon also pushes them to pay for Fulfillment by Amazon and advertising. Even larger companies such as Tumi, a luxury bag maker, and PopSockets, which produces cellphone grips, have described Amazon as trying to control what they sell as well as how and where they sell it.

That said though, in a recent report (pdf), Amazon indicated over the course of 2019 and 2020 it invested more than $30 billion in logistics, tools, services, and employees to help small and medium-sized businesses. It also provides assistance such as technical support, loans, and credits for its cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services.

Read the entire article on big changes are afoot for global small businesses, especially when it comes to Amazon.