Amazon should absolutely not ditch private labels to appease regulators. Frankly, Amazon has no case to answer here – just as other retailers like Walmart, Target, Costco, Tesco, Aldi – all of which have extensive private label collections that have been built off the back of customer data and intelligence – have no case to answer.

However Amazon has a vast number of private labels and not all of them deliver solidly. The proposition is also muddled, piecemeal and somewhat confusing. It is right to assess and trim the number in the name of efficiency and meeting customer needs. Even if Amazon halved the number of private labels it has, it would still have a very large assortment.

How Amazon handles the data may not be different in this case, but giving other suppliers half a chance is a good thing for all of us and our industry.

I don’t see how using customer data collected from the sale of branded goods is either illegal or unethical. It’s up to the brands to tell Amazon to cease and desist if they object to this practice. With the volume of private-label sales sitting at 1 percent of total sales, and facing scrutiny from the government, Amazon would be wise to abandon its private label online business.

To the platform owner goes the power. Amazon’s digital-forward business model ensures that the data it does collect is robust, connected, and relevant. In the scheme of things, Amazon’s private brands could be sheared off without doing much damage. Any disappointing performance is likely due to oversaturation as Amazon flooded its platform with owned brands in every major category. Competition from the flood of Asian brand factories that sell on the Amazon platform has created further brand dilution and confusion. It’s no wonder more brands are attempting to wean off of the free-for-all that is now Amazon. If Amazon backs off of private brands, will it open the floodgates to brand-based scrutiny for other retailers?

If (and this is a mighty big if) Amazon is transparent about how its private label is ranked compared with other brands, there is no reason for the company to abandon the line. Who can make that assessment is for brains bigger than mine, but it will have to go way beyond Amazon asking regulators to trust them.

Amazon is hardly the only retailer to offer private label products. Why should they abandon these when every other retailer is expanding their adoption to drive margins? And yes, the other retailers use their own sales data just like Amazon does…

What Amazon is doing isn’t illegal but it is poor sportsmanship. The data they use to drive merchandise decisions is earned directly from their own customers, which is what other retailers like Target, Walmart and Kroger do as well. However the scale and breadth of information generated by Amazon’s third-party marketplace platform does give them an unfair advantage that can’t be easily replicated by others.

Amazon is doing absolutely nothing wrong here. Every retailer involved in private label uses sales data to figure out which products to bring to market. This is simply an example of Amazon being called out because of their success.

At 1 percent of their revenues, ending their private label brands would not be a fatal blow to the business. And if it eliminates regulatory hassles/fines/restrictions and simultaneously improves seller trust, perhaps it would be a smart move. I have never had great luck with Amazon private label products anyway. I tried a few of them and have been consistently underwhelmed/disappointed. Perhaps the product quality is a reflection of the importance of those products to their business. I do, however, have much more faith in Amazon’s Choice labels applied to third-party brands. Perhaps there is a greater opportunity to expand those labels?

There’s nothing very difficult about copying a product that already exists in the market. The article says it — it’s been going on for decades. The hard part is merchandising and developing a meaningful brand promise, a brand story that resonates with the customer. Amazon has proved to be not very skillful at merchandising and brand development. No problem. They just bump their stuff to the front of the line. That’s also been going on for decades, but maybe not at the level of and sophistication of Amazon.

The negotiators would settle for Amazon exiting the proprietary label business? That’s ridiculous. All the brand and consumer data would still be sitting there. You think Amazon won’t find some way to monetize it? Product and process. Amazon proves to be mediocre at product, but remains brilliant at process. Neither the problem nor the solution sit in the product bucket. They’re sitting in the process bucket.

It’s their platform – if you don’t like how they treat your marketplace data or product listings, don’t sell them on Amazon. This seems way too simple.

Rivals already imitate each other’s in-demand product features. Private labels mimic national brands. It’s nothing new. The difference here is Amazon is faster at seeing what sells and getting to market.

Should Amazon axe private labels? Absolutely not.

As the cost of living soars, consumers need affordable private label options across categories. Cutting underperforming own-brands makes sense. Eliminating the entire private label altogether would harm consumer access to variety, quality and affordability.

Amazon has an unusual business model, in that their most famous line of business – the marketplace – may be the smallest contributor to their bottom-line profitability. It appears that their largest contributor is advertising (third largest in the U.S., trailing only Google and Facebook) followed by cloud services, with AWS being the world’s dominant player. Their private label products are a minuscule portion of their revenue and profitability.

The big question is whether Amazon would even know which products to sell in competition with their vendors without the performance metrics the marketplace provides, and at what price point. They can fight the U.S. regulators, maybe even successfully. But it doesn’t appear that the benefit is justified by the cost and the relative IRR compared to their other lines of business.

It’s called a free market. This is a slippery slope. Any purchase connects to a lifestyle. Dropping private label in any one category does not serve the needs of the customer population.

Amazon is both a retailer and the largest electronic landlord in the world. Except it’s a landlord that sees every possible expression of customer behavior and probably collects and understands more data than its marketplace tenants ever will see, even though (in some respects) that customer “belongs” to the marketplace tenant. Then Amazon creates its own products, based on its one-sided command of data, and competes with its tenants. It used to be said that retailers compete with supply chains — that’s true, but today retailers compete with customer information chains, and Amazon has a one-sided advantage that invites regulatory review.

I agree with Stephen, it’s Amazon’s platform. I am sure this is pervasive, it’s a smart business practice. Take a legacy business like Kroger; it likely favors its brands on kroger.com having its private label equivalent pop up under relevant searches. And at the end of the day, shoppers still have a choice to choose whichever brand they like. If they are that influenced by web searches on Amazon.com, maybe we have other issues.

No, no, no. Private label branding, design and positioning should be a key component for every retailer in today’s environment including Amazon. Amazon also offers all of its Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) partners the complete set of data from Amazon’s consumers so that Amazon’s FBA retail competitors can get a better marketing snapshot of each category and product that the retailer is considering. Why shouldn’t Amazon have the same access to this data that they are also selling to their FBA retail partners? Amazon should not reduce or change their private label forays into any category just because of possible government intervention.

No. Fundamentally Amazon is not doing anything different than pretty much all its major competitors are doing. Private labels/brands are inherently part of the retail playbook and can deliver real customer value. But Amazon should do two things. One, it should do a much better job demonstrating to consumers, regulators and suppliers alike that is has processes in place to avoid any potential major conflicts of interests. Gaining more trust through transparency and guardrails is the goal here. Two, if Amazon retail is to be more than a loss leader for its advertising business, the company needs to get better at merchandising. The Bezos era was characterized by too much throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and that’s created some real challenges. A more focused and thoughtful “owned brand” assortment strategy is what is needed, which will necessarily result in some pruning–and may cool the jets of regulators.

I don’t know any retailer who doesn’t develop their private label based on sales data and trends. This is not a new phenomenon. This is good business.

If Amazon can’t do it, then what happens to Walmart or Kroger?

When retailers and brands enter Amazon’s marketplace and ecosystem, they know the company will leverage their data and insights for their private label ambitions. While this certainly gives Amazon a competitive edge, how Amazon chooses to leverage the customer data, analytics and intelligence is entirely up to them and should not be subject to regulatory considerations.

Amazon has every right to continue offering private labels, similar to the business model their main competitors, Target, Walmart, Kroger, and others, offer. However considering the ubiquity of Amazon’s private label offers, the company should take a prescriptive and strategic view and perhaps look to optimize these assortments. Maybe a way around all the regulatory pressures is to provide quality over quantity in the private label space.

Since when did Amazon drive decisions based on industry speculation? In business if a company is not favoring their own brands they would be considered negligent from a fiduciary responsibility perspective. The story here is really that Amazon’s 250,000 private label products are not doing that well, despite the very real advantage they possess of being able to place these products side by side with the top sellers in any market. Bezos targeted 10 percent of the business would be driven by high margin private label – but only 1 percent has been reached. Culling segments that aren’t performing only makes sense. Regulation concerns are a red herring.

How is Amazon different from every other retailer which offers its own merchandise for sale? The only real difference I see is that Amazon offers more of a price differentiation. This is the strategy employed years ago by retailers entering the private label business. The goal at that time was to knock off the branded options. Only when they realized that attributes other than price might generate incremental store visits, did they pursue this strategy. Amazon’s strategy appears to be branded knockoffs. If it wants to stay in/grow this business, it needs to develop brands with attributes not found in national brands.

No, Amazon should not ax its private label business to appease regulators. But the company cannot ignore the attention it has garnered.

Retailing is structurally changing, and the amount and type of data capture, and implications, are very different than it was a decade or two ago. Like any competitive business, Amazon uses all its strengths to build deeper and broader business moats. The cries of foul play should be expected, as are regulators’ concerns and inquiries. However, that does not automatically suggest a strategy reversal is required, but perhaps a course correction to avoid a pyrrhic victory.

Technology’s constant advances, new business models, and disruptive social forces create uncertainties even for the most prominent companies. Regulators are necessary to curb unsavory players and pariahs feeding on vulnerable consumers, but please tread carefully so innovation doesn’t become the accidental victim.

Amazon has been outperforming all its competitor retailers. Being a marketplace and owning private labels is not a new concept. Just like Amazon, Walmart has its own labels for almost every product category. So I think regulators are being unfair to Amazon. The regulatory norms must be applied to all the other retailers as well.

Following through the current circumstances, Amazon shutting down its private labels might turn out to be a good call. Losing 1 percent revenue from those labels won’t strap Amazon’s overall gains. Additionally, vendors will be able to sell more confidently with Amazon. To steer away from jeopardizing that, the decision to ditch the private labels might prove favorable.