Amazon is changing the face of small business, and it looks like Amazon. is that a good thing?

What do ex-US Marines, housewives, retirees, and Chinese business veterans have in common? You’ve probably bought something on Amazon.

Third-party sellers who sell their products through Amazon’s marketplace come from all walks of life and are increasingly responsible for the sales of the online giants. Amazon launched his third-party marketplace in 2000, allowing small business owners to list their products on Amazon (for a fee). There are now millions of third-party sellers on the site, with third-party sales accounting for about 60% of Amazon’s physical product sales.

A discussion of third-party sellers at the heart of Amazon’s ecosystem and the company’s complex position in the world. Is Amazon Exploiting or Lifting These Small Businesses?

Moira Weigel, an assistant professor of communication studies at Northeastern University, says it’s not that simple.

“We are changing the face of small business,” says Weigel.

Weigel and her alumni research assistant, Zhaozhou Dai, spent the past two years talking to third-party sellers in the global e-commerce marketplace, discussing “a hidden but very important part of the global consumer economy. Illustrated Amazon’s influence on Her report, “Amazon’s Trickle-Down Monopoly,” published this week in Data & Society, is the culmination of that work. This research SSRN Electronic Journal.

“Being an Amazon seller doesn’t look much like running a one-person storefront that politicians and pundits evoke when they talk about small businesses in America,” she added. “As some of my interviewees have said, it usually looks like day trading trying to interpret and infer global data flows that are experienced primarily through screens.”

The impact of this change goes beyond Amazon and its third-party sellers. Weigel said the US, China and the EU have “a great deal of trust” in small businesses and entrepreneurs to help reduce systemic inequalities and create opportunities for people.

“Entrepreneurship is a state project,” says Weigel. “There are low-interest loans, tax cuts, and subsidies for small businesses.

For third-party sellers, the benefits of selling on Amazon are obvious. Access the world’s largest online marketplace. All they have to do is provide inventory and pay Amazon to ship, store, list, and advertise that product. The whole enterprise is low risk for Amazon, high risk and high reward for the seller.

There are specific ways Amazon harms third-party sellers. Intentionally use data collected from merchants to create unique and competitive products, or use algorithmic errors to randomly suspend accounts or products. But Weigel also saw Amazon as “the best opportunity available” and spoke with a number of sellers who have made millions of dollars in business selling through the platform.

Beyond whether Amazon is hurting or harming small businesses, Weigel says her research shows that Amazon will fundamentally change the world of commerce and business, making it look like Amazon. It highlights how you do things.

“[Third-party sellers] It’s the starting point, or entry point, for seeing Amazon remake the world in its image,” says Weigel. – Prepare. ”

People are turning their cars and homes into smaller versions of Amazon fulfillment centers. The Chinese seller told Weigel that the Amazon-supported training course urged the seller to accept that he would have to sell at a loss during his first six months, just like Amazon does. said.

Amazon’s transformation strategy is most clear in its approach in China.

Weigel says that after trying to break into the Chinese market in the 2010s, Amazon found it couldn’t compete with domestic e-commerce companies like Alibaba, Pinduoduo and Taobao. Instead, it focused on attracting Chinese SMEs and merchants as third-party sellers.

Around the same time, China was introducing initiatives to support entrepreneurs in cross-border e-commerce. Amazon stepped in here.

“Amazon has made many efforts in partnership with local governments in China to recruit and train merchants and manufacturers to sell through our platform,” Weigel said. “We have found evidence that Amazon, as a consultant to the Chinese government, has developed these new duty-free warehouses to facilitate the shipment of goods. We created this pipeline: customers with no other intermediaries.”

Weigel said regulatory and legal changes are needed to ensure that Amazon is held accountable for its impact on sellers, warehouse workers, and the e-commerce world at large. This includes antitrust laws and potential partnerships and joint efforts between third-party sellers and Amazon’s logistics workers. Weigel says it has to.

“Industrialization and the rise of railroads revolutionized manufacturing in the 19th century,” says Weigel. “Laws have been passed and new standards have been developed. It is important to remember that the shape technology takes is never inevitable.Change is possible in these matters.”