Amazon can accumulate your shopping dollars even when you’re not on Amazon

Amazon, with another blast of Prime Day-style deals this week, may seem like it’s doing everything it can to get you into its store. But it’s quietly finding ways to be a part of your online shopping experience elsewhere, too.

the Amazon commanded more than 37% in the US e-commerce market last year. After advertising its last Prime Day sales event in July as its own the biggest ever (more again), he collects a second gold from discounts with his Major Early Access Sale Tuesday and Wednesday.

But if you look around, you may see signs that Amazon is reaching out to your online shopping in new places. In April, Amazon revealed “Buy with Prime” program that allows sellers to add a button to their own websites. By clicking on it, customers can access Prime benefits for purchasing outside of Amazon’s own sprawling store, with Amazon handling payment and shipping. Buy with Prime makes sense in light of another feature announced last year: Local shopping, which allows third-party sellers to offer street pickup from their storefronts on Amazon’s online marketplace. Both facilitate transactions that typically don’t involve Amazon at all.

Both are examples of how Amazon is leveraging its logistics power for other retailers. But taken together, these features give Amazon entry points into some of your online transactions where it was previously locked out—another way for the giant retailer to get its tentacles into your shopping cart when you’re someone else’s customer.

Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Buy with Prime, said in a statement that the company helps retailers increase sales by “offering shopping benefits that millions of Prime members love and trust — including fast, free shipping and seamless checkout experience. “

An Amazon spokesperson added in a statement that the company invests billions a year in building the infrastructure and services needed to drive the business of third-party sellers and merchants, whether on Amazon or not.

“For more than 20 years, we’ve been providing innovative opportunities to empower small business success,” the spokesperson said, “and we continue to look for ways to innovate on behalf of and delight entrepreneurs and small business owners.”

For now, you’re seeing events like Prime’s early access sale this week because Amazon and its peers want to make your holiday shopping easy earlier in the year, according to analysts. And all the purchases made outside of Amazon’s site during the deal frenzy?

Amazon would like some of them, too.

Amazon goes behind the scenes

Although you may not have noticed, Amazon has been processing customer payments and shipping packages for some purchases made on other companies’ websites for years. It is Amazon Pay function and Multi-channel performance both were introduced before 2020.

Inserting a Buy with Prime button on a retailer’s website reinforces this process. Amazon processes payments and fulfills orders as if the purchase were made on its marketplace.

In addition to Amazon Fulfillment support, Amazon will also advertise some sellers using Buy with Prime on social media platforms, sending customers straight to brand websites. Sellers can also use an official badge to promote Buy with Prime in their own marketing.

Amazon will even create some discounts from its own website for sellers participating in the program: Businesses will be able to direct shoppers away from their Amazon Marketplace storefront to their own website to use Buy with Prime.

With in-store pickup still in its infancy according to Amazon, shoppers who want to pick up something from a nearby store today can search for it on Amazon without having to browse individual businesses’ websites. In addition to driving more of the mega-retailers’ customers to local businesses, the feature requires those stores to list merchandise in the Amazon store to facilitate purchases.

Amazon did not detail how many retailers are using the Buy with Prime button, which is currently available to sellers by invitation only. A brand that uses the service, Large circular machinesaid in an Amazon press release that half of its sales have come from the Buy with Prime feature since it was added.

“It’s hard to gain the trust of shoppers to make a purchase from our own website,” said Patrick Sean Briseno, the company’s e-commerce and marketing manager, noting that the Buy with Prime badge lends credibility.

Brian Yarbrough, a financial advisor at Edward Jonessaid some shoppers may find it more welcoming to go to the company’s website to learn more before making a purchase — but still want the benefits of a Prime membership.

The shop for everything, everywhere

Buy with Prime and store receipts are part of a long-term strategy to expand Amazon’s e-commerce business beyond the website, retail analysts say. Just like it is facing a slowdown in sales growthAmazon has more fulfillment and logistics infrastructure than it needs as a result of rapid construction to keep up with pandemic demand.

Tools like these are ways Amazon can use its extra capacity to fulfill orders, said Neil Saunders, a retail analyst at consultancy GlobalData.

The options may even appeal to retailers who don’t see value in selling from an Amazon storefront, but can benefit from other Amazon services. “Amazon can say: Maybe not everyone wants to be in the marketplace, but we have all these logistics and payment offerings,” Saunders said.

In addition to tapping into more purchases, Amazon’s features can drive more data about your shopping habits to the mega-retailer. That way, Amazon has an even clearer picture of what you’re buying and how you’re buying it.

Amazon says it doesn’t sell user data and pointed to the FAQ on Buy with Prime, which says the company will not use non-public information it receives from those purchases to make its own sourcing, inventory level or pricing decisions that apply to Amazon’s own products and those from third-party sellers countries. It also said Amazon will not use non-public data from Buy with Prime purchases for merchandising or personalization features on its online marketplace.

Still, such data has the potential to be “very valuable,” Saunders said. Amazon already uses your shopping information from its own site to recommend other products and place ads in your search results, for example. The company was too accused of violating its own policy for not using data from third-party sellers in its marketplace to manufacture competing products under its private label business. Under questioning by Congress in 2020, then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said he could not guarantee the policy was never violated.

Amazon’s expansion into other corners of the e-commerce industry is likely to attract the attention of federal antitrust regulators, who are already investigating company practices. The company is far from dominating the market for tools that facilitate purchases from a merchant’s website, Saunders said. Shopify, Salesforce, and Adobe are among the many companies offering these services.

Still, Amazon doesn’t necessarily need to dominate a second industry for these fulfillment features to further increase its e-commerce market share, said Sucharita Kodali, retail analyst at market research company Forrester. Also, Amazon’s promises not to use the data collected by these features may not satisfy the government.

“That would be something I would think antitrust regulators would frown upon,” Kodali said.

For now, that might mean more boxes delivered with that Amazon arrow smiley face.