As one of the world’s largest online retailers, Amazon has a large number of merchants and products on the platform, and the competition is very fierce. However, in this fierce competitive environment, some companies will try to gain unfair competitive advantages through malicious competition, which affects the sales interests of other companies and the reputation of the entire platform. As an Amazon business, in order to better adopt corresponding strategies, it is necessary to understand the following common malicious competition patterns.
1. Change product type.
Competitors may pull your products into their own product types, but in fact your products do not belong to this category, so your account may be frozen at this time. However, Amazon’s existing “Other Categories” service will help victims defeat this conspiracy. Another way to implement this conspiracy is to create a new mark to sell your products in existing categories, so there will be many different marks for the same product, but this does not comply with Amazon’s rules. Amazon will combine various ASINs to satisfy every merchant.
Coping strategies:
File a complaint, wait patiently, and appeal to Amazon if someone deliberately changes your product photos.
2. Maliciously buy out inventory.
Competitors are a loophole, and even if they place an order on Amazon, they cannot pay immediately. First, they clear out the other party’s inventory and use the time difference to let their brand take advantage of the loophole. If the seller does not complain to the customer service, the subsequent orders may be canceled directly, causing the seller’s weight to decline, leaving more than 10,000 inventory.
Another is that malicious competitors may buy a large amount of or even buy out your inventory, and then return a large amount or all of it before and after the return deadline on the grounds of counterfeit and shoddy products. In this way, you may get into trouble because of the large return volume or violation of the rules, and your inventory may not be reused for a month or more. During the period when your inventory is bought out, malicious merchants are likely to use your list to sell the goods again, or sell goods on other platforms. If the goods are not sold within a month, they will return them to you with various quality problems, so that they can profit from the products you sell.
Coping strategies:
Set a maximum purchase quantity to increase the difficulty of the other party’s operation. Once discovered, quickly open a phone complaint.
Pay attention to large orders of goods. If the buyer comes to you for various reasons after 30 days, explain the reasons to Amazon. If they apply for a return within 30 days, agree to their request immediately, but do not stop to tell Amazon that you suspect your bad peers have framed you. If necessary, provide invoices to prove that the goods you sell are brand new, and tell Amazon that you are worried that they will treat each return case of the same product as an independent return case, and ask them to investigate whether the customer is a third-party seller or a person closely related to the third-party seller.
The most important thing to prevent being spoofed by peers is to discover and report to Amazon in time.
3. Malicious clicks on ads.
Malicious clicks on ads refer to malicious merchants clicking on competitors’ ads through robots or humans, thereby consuming their promotion costs and reducing advertising effects, thereby gaining an unfair competitive advantage. This will waste the promotion costs of legitimate merchants and reduce customers’ trust in the platform.
Coping strategies:
Complain to Amazon customer service, apply for an investigation into this malicious competition behavior, improve prevention awareness, and check advertising reports frequently. Malicious clicks may improve the ranking of merchants, and Amazon will also judge that the click-through rate has suddenly soared. If Amazon finds that this is a malicious act, the merchant will refund the lost advertising fees due to invalid clicks, but the advertising fees for invalid clicks may or may not be recovered.