The Characteristics, Harm and Anti-monopoly Measures of Digital Enterprise Monopolistic Behavior in Digital Economy: A Case Study of Amazon

Abstract

With the wave of artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, big data and other digital technologies becoming new general technologies, digital enterprises present new characteristics of industrial organization: non-contest-ability of information products, zero marginal cost of information, digital market can be absent online, and big data can replace material materials as key inputs. These new characteristics lead to some new types of monopolistic behaviors in digital enterprises. This paper selects the self-preferential behavior for detailed analysis, and takes the well-known digital enterprise Amazon platform as an example: (1) summarizes the foundation (development mode) of realizing self-preferential behavior; (2) the whole chain of self-preferential treatment behavior from pricing, product selection, procurement, after-sales and inventory; (3) It points out four kinds of behaviors that are harmful to competition, such as weakening competitors' advantages, increasing competitors' costs, reducing innovation motivation and damaging consumers' welfare. Finally, this paper provides a reference for the monopoly identification of this behavior from three aspects: expanding the identification of digital economy market, refining the standards for identifying dominant market position, and carefully identifying the abuse of dominant market position by self-preferential treatment, and further puts forward regulatory suggestions.