4liters wrote:I don't think it'll make much difference when it comes to fishing gear. The prices of big brands are fairly tightly and anyone found selling stuff on Amazon for 10% less than everyone else would pretty quickly have an unpleasant phone call from their sales rep.
Initially it's unlikely this would happen, precisely because selling on Amazon costs so much. For local sellers they would be crazy to undercut their own website by selling on Amazon at less than their own price, since they are then losing not only the lower sale price but also an additional 15% (generally).
When prices get really low on Amazon it's usually either Amazon itself or the faceless sellers who have no website and no other sale outlet. When you have a lot of such sellers vying for the buybox you get what we call a 'race to the bottom', with auto-repricers scrambling to keep the sellers price below that of others.
This often ends up with sellers who are willing to cut corners anywhere getting the buybox; their margins are so impossibly thin (or they got their stock from a less than reputable source) that they cannot provide reasonable service. This isn't always the case of course but it happens.
I'm responsible for the API (software integration of my clients site to Amazon) and operation of our repricer and we simply will not allow it to get crazy; if someone wants to sell at a loss or nearly so we let them do it and just wait until we get the buybox back later.
A big issue with Amazon US in recent years is they allowed Chinese sellers on, and by 'on' I mean in droves, there is no barrier to signup and many many outright scammers selling plus lots of counterfeiting. This has hurt the marketplace overall but Amazon didn't seem too worried.
Getting back to the 'race for the bottom' comment I made and your comment about margins, other folks are correct in that the manufacturers can't stop someone selling the product at whatever price they want. However they can and do have what we call 'MAP' (minimum advertised price) and this is becoming increasingly prevalant in the USA. Quality manufacturers will sometimes set a MAP on parts of their range, meaning authorized sellers aren't allowed to advertise a price lower than this (however they
can sell for lower - but you need to add to the cart to see the price). Sellers who break these rules risk getting cut off by the supplier (if they buy direct - or their supplier gets cut off, if they don't and the supplier can be located).
This is legit in the USA at least and acts as a stabilizer on products where the manufacturer wants to keep the quality of the sellers up. Since most sellers will be selling at MAP, buyers then have to choose amongst sellers not by price, but by
reputation, which is what they want. If a seller gives better customer service or better experience for buyers, they get a better rep and have a better chance of winning the buybox for MAP'd items.
BTW while typically MAP does allow selling for less once the item is added to the cart, often (at least on marketplaces like Amazon) the price is just kept at MAP.
So to summarise: yes big brands are worried about some of the crap going on in marketplaces and when and where they can they try to do what they are able to do to keep up quality.
And, yes I'm a total geek
when it comes to this stuff cause I've been living and breathing it for almost a decade :