Placement inside the Buy Box is a major driver of sales for companies that sell on Amazon, but if Amazon sees a product for sale at a lower price on another site, it will remove those two buttons and replace them with less enticing language and designs, which can sharply curtail sales.“A price is considered uncompetitive even if it is just one cent above reputable retailers outside of Amazon,” Varun Soni, who leads Amazon’s seller pricing team, explained at a conference in October.Amazon, led since last year by Andy Jassy, who replaced Jeff Bezos as chief executive, has previously argued that its Buy Box policies helped consumers by keeping prices low and delivery times short. But its design has been a source of antitrust scrutiny.In September, the California attorney general sued Amazon, arguing that sellers often raise their prices on other websites to match the price on Amazon and keep their placement in the Buy Box, to the detriment of consumers.Th …
