Amazon tells lawmakers uses aggregated seller data to help business

Amazon.com Inc uses “aggregated data” from sellers in its third-party marketplace to improve its overall business, the online retailer said in response to a congressional antitrust probe that could raise concerns with such sellers.

Such data, also culled from public sources and Amazon’s first-party sales, is available to the company’s retail and private brand teams, it said in an October 11 document released by the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

The panel, which is investigating potential breaches of antitrust law by big technology companies, also made public the responses from Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Apple Inc. Data on individual sellers is not used to improve Amazon’s business, the company said, and its teams do not use seller data to launch, source or price private label products, which number about 158,000.