Facebook and Amazon have both released concessions to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which accepted commitments from each company over their retail platforms: Facebook Marketplace and Amazon Marketplace.

Two separate investigations by the CMA lead to the commitments from each online retail platform to change their practices to ensure better and more fair market competition.

While the investigation lead to the commitments, they were given voluntarily by each company and do not necessarily mean any wrongdoing was exposed.

Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said: “We welcome the constructive resolution of our concerns in a way that benefits people and businesses and expect to see more of this kind of resolution once the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill comes into force.”

Amazon Marketplace

Commitments secured from the CMA from Amazon are intended to ensure that third-party Marketplace sellers can compete on a level-playing field and that UK customers get access to the best deals.

Most sales on Amazon – everything from saucepans to cosmetics – take place through the ‘Buy Box’. By giving independent sellers that use the Marketplace a fair change of their offers being featured in the ‘Buy Box’, the commitments will help ensure that customers do not miss out on attractive product offers from alternative sellers.

In addition, Amazon will be prevented from using Marketplace data is obtains from third-party sellers to give itself an unfair competitive advantage and will allow sellers to negotiate their own delivery rates directly with independent providers of Prime delivery services.

These concerns were first brought up in the CMA 2022 investigation, which also looked into if Amazon was giving an unfair advantage to sellers that use its own warehousing and delivery services rather than rival logistics businesses.

Compliance with these commitments will be monitored by an independent trustee that will be approved by the CMA.

Amazon had already made some concessions to the CMA, concerning their selling of third party seller data for unfair market advantage.

Facebook Marketplace

Meta has also signed commitments which will prevent the firm from exploiting its advertising customer’s data, which should ensure the protection of businesses and customers.

Without these measures in place, Meta risks having an unfair competitive advantage that could distort competition, the CMA argued.

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Going forward, competitors of Facebook Marketplace that advertise on Meta platforms can ‘opt out’ of their data being used to improve Facebook Marketplace.

As well as giving competitors more autonomy over their ad data, Meta has also pledged to limit how it uses ad data when developing its products.

As a result, Meta cannot exploit advertising customer’s data to give itself an unfair advantage when competing with products or services sold by those advertising customers.

“We have accepted Amazon’s commitments as they help thousands of independent UK sellers to compete on a level playing field against Amazon’s own retail arm. This should also mean customers get access to the best product offers,” Ann Pope, senior director for antitrust enforcement at the CMA, said.

“The commitments secured from Meta mean the firm cannot exploit advertising customers’ data to give itself an unfair advantage – and as such distort competition.

“Having assessed the commitments and the feedback received, including from sellers, advertisers and customers, we believe both sets of commitments address the specific competition concerns we had here in the UK.”