The Marketplace Strategy Blog

Touted as the ‘biggest global shopping event in Amazon’s history” - Prime Day 2018, was bound to set new records. So much so, that within hours of launch, the vast web traffic had brought Amazon servers down, losing an estimated $90+ million in sales. The discount day was also marred by the ongoing strikes at Amazon warehouses in Europe. With workers in Spain and German arguing against the poor working conditions. The strikers were urging shoppers not to buy from Amazon for the duration of a strike that is set to last for 72 hours in Spain.

As mentioned previously, many people at Mirakl have taken a pledge not to shop on Amazon for gifts this holiday season. Our goal is to support other retailers to help them stay in business while they fix their customer experience challenges. Yes, those retailers may have been slow to make the right investments, and aren’t moving quickly enough to fix things, but let’s literally buy them some time.

One of the joys of parenthood is that it gives a great opportunity to rewatch movie classics. This weekend I decided to watch the movie BIG with my 7 and 9-year-old daughters. During the famous piano dance scene my daughters asked me, “Dad can we go to this store? It looks amazing!”

 It’s important to start by clarifying that typically in the marketplace model, 3rd party sellers control their prices. The marketplace operator takes a commission on the sale, but doesn’t control the price.

However, today one of the largest Marketplace operators decided to wield their power and control 3rd party seller product prices. The Wall Street Journal covered Amazon’s decision to discount third party products ahead of the 2017 holiday season.

 One thing is clear: Doug McMillan is not waving the white flag. If anyone embodies the spirit of fighting back against Amazon, it’s Walmart’s CEO. In the March-April 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review, Doug opened up about his near and long-term strategy for Walmart.