Amazon Japan has said it will collaborate with Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) after the watchdog conducted an on-site inspection related to suspected violations of anti-monopoly laws.
The e-commerce giant is under suspicion of inappropriately urging vendors to lower their prices on its online shopping platform in return for better product placement, as first reported by Reuters, citing a source.
“We are cooperating fully with the [Japanese] authorities,” Amazon Japan spokesperson, Tomoko Inoue, told TechCrunch in an email statement.
The action concerns Amazon’s Buy Box system, which highlights one seller’s products as the preferred choice on a product page. Shoppers need to go to different pages to see products from different vendors so the Buy Box funnels shoppers’ attention to whichever products have been selected to be featured.
The tech giant has been accused of requesting “competitive pricing” (i.e., lower prices) versus competing e-commerce platforms in order for products to be featured in the Buy Box system, according to reporting by the Japan Times.
Moreover, sellers were allegedly asked to use Amazon’s internal logistics and payment services to be eligible for the Buy Box promotion.
Japan’s antitrust watchdog did not respond to our request for comment on the raid.
Other Buy Box probes
In recent years, Amazon has faced similar scrutiny by antitrust authorities elsewhere, including in the European Union and the U.K., over how it operates the Buy Box, among other issues of concern.
In December 2022, the e-commerce giant went on to offer commitments to EU regulators that settled their probe. The U.K. investigation was also settled in this way in November 2023.
In both cases, Amazon avoided any penalties as enforcers accepted multiyear pledges that it would apply “objectively verifiable and non-discriminatory conditions and criteria” for the Buy Box featured offer pick (in the case of the U.K. settlement). Although a U.K. class action-style lawsuit, filed in October 2022, is suing the company over the issue with a goal of extracting more than $1 billion in damages for local consumers it claims were harmed by Amazon’s action.
On home turf, Amazon is also already subject to substantive antitrust action. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from 17 states filed suit back in Septembe …