[amsilprotag]

I recently finished Brad Stone's The Everything Store, written in 2013. In the last chapter, brands complained about Amazon pricing below the their Minimum Advertised Price (MAP), to the detriment of physical sellers. Stone used the German knife company Wüsthof as an example. Wüsthof at one point around 2010 stopped supplying Amazon, but its products were still sold by third parties. Looking at Amazon now, there are at least 100 in-house Wüsthof products being sold by Amazon at prices that seem lower than the mid-hundred dollar price ranges cited in The Everything Store.

Does anyone know what happened generally to Amazon's relationship with brands over the past six years? Presumably over this time, Amazon has only gained in bargaining power over brands at the expense of physical locations, in accordance with Ben Thompson's Aggregation Theory. As an outsider, it seemed like Amazon and brand buyers have done well at the expense of brands and retail stores.