Competition record
Amazon Marketplace DVD sellers
Deep profile · 1 linked library matter
This library id is a group of independent sellers who listed DVDs and Blu-ray discs on Amazon Marketplace. They fixed those disc prices, and the library records the matter as settled.
Overview
The defendants are third-party sellers, people and small businesses with their own storefronts on Amazon Marketplace. They sourced DVDs and Blu-ray discs and set the prices shoppers saw on those listings. Amazon, the marketplace operator, is not the company this id describes.
The Justice Department charged sellers with agreeing among themselves to raise and hold disc prices instead of undercutting one another on the same titles. Shoppers comparing two listings were not seeing fully independent offers.
The library status is settled. Guilty pleas resolved the criminal charges against individual sellers. The recorded result is those pleas, and the shoppers who bought the discs were the people who paid the agreed prices.
Competition footprint
The market is a single catalog title offered by several marketplace sellers at once.
An agreement on the disc price removes the reason to shop across those storefronts.
Settlement here means the seller prosecutions were resolved, and it is not a penalty imposed on Amazon.
Consumer & business angle
Shoppers buying a film on disc paid the coordinated listing price.
Other marketplace sellers of the same discs were the rivals in the agreement.
What to watch
- How enforcers treat price agreements among small sellers who share one online catalog.
- Marketplace rules on seller-to-seller contact about prices, which are a compliance issue for anyone listing the same goods.
Markets
online DVD retail · third-party marketplace selling · online marketplaces · DVD and Blu-ray retail · third-party e-commerce sellers · small business cartels
Also known as: amazon dvd sellers, marketplace dvd sellers