Amazon is offering incentives like free advertising and lower commissions if merchants agree to stop selling on Temu, according to managers at two large China-based merchants.
Amazon has also started removing Buy Now buttons from product listings when it discovers identical items listed on Temu at lower prices, suggesting that the company is now enforcing a pricing policy on Temu that it has previously applied to other sites like Walmart and Target.
When one merchant asked Amazon for a reason why it lost the Buy Box, an Amazon representative responded by sending them links to listings for identical products on Temu with lower prices.
The Information reports that Anker Innovations, a popular cellphone power bank maker that generates around half of its annual revenue from Amazon, closed its US Temu storefront last week. Temu had previously listed Anker products at significantly lower prices than on Amazon. For example a Bluetooth speaker sold for $36.99 on Amazon, but was listed at $25.99 on Temu, with similar delivery times.
Amazon hasn’t explicitly said whether it applies its lowest-price policy to Temu, but merchants have previously said they were worried about the risk of Amazon enforcing its policy on Temu listings, since the merchants themselves do not control the price Temu shows shoppers, whereas merchants are in control of their product pricing on Walmart and Target.
Amazon denies the allegations and says that it supports selling across different sites. (LOL, they would say that…)