Amazon Japan has agreed to work with the Japan Fair Trade Commission, which inspected on-site a business after having suspected a breach of antitrust law.

According to Reuters, citing a source, Amazon Japan has faced allegations that it has improperly pressured its merchants to drop their prices on its platform in exchange for enhanced placement.

"We are fully cooperating with the Japanese authorities," said Amazon Japan spokesperson, Tomoko Inoue in an email statement to TechCrunch.

The practice refers to Amazon's Buy Box system, where it presents a single seller's offerings as the default selection on a product page. A buyer has to go through different pages to look at offerings from other vendors; so, the Buy Box channeled shoppers' focus to whatever products were picked for promotion.

According to reporting by the Japan Times, the tech giant has been accused of requesting "competitive pricing" (i.e., lower prices) versus competing e-commerce platforms in order for products to be featured in the Buy Box system.
The sellers were allegedly asked to use Amazon's internal logistics and payment services to be eligible for the Buy Box promotion.
Japan's antitrust watchdog did not respond to our request for comment on the raid.

Other Buy Box probes
Amazon has faced similar scrutiny by antitrust authorities elsewhere, including in the European Union and the U.K., over how it operates the Buy Box, among other issues of concern.
The e-commerce giant went on to offer commitments to EU regulators that settled their probe in December 2022. The U.K. investigation was also settled in this way in November 2023.

In each of those cases, Amazon sidestepped any fines as enforcers accepted multiyear promises it would use "objectively verifiable and non-discriminatory conditions and criteria" to choose the Buy Box featured offer pick, in the case of the U.K. settlement. While a U.K.-style class action suit filed in October 2022 is suing the company over the issue, aiming at extracting more than $1 billion in damages for local consumers it claims were harmed by Amazon's action.

On home turf, Amazon is also already subject to substantive antitrust action. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from 17 states filed suit back in September 2023 accusing the e-commerce giant of illegally stifling competition, including by meddling in the pricing of products on its platform. Last month a judge ruled the FTC can proceed — with a trial slated to be held in October 2026.

In a court filing connected to the case, which was released in November 2023, the FTC said that Amazon.com, with 1 billion items available in its online store, used a program that had increased prices to U.S. households by over $1 billion. In their own legal papers, Amazon countered that they have not employed the program since 2019.

Elsewhere, the e-commerce giant may also face a new EU investigation next year. According to Reuters, which reported last week, the bloc's authorities suspect it of giving preferential treatment to its own branded products on its marketplace — which violates the ban on self-preferencing that it's subject to under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

If Amazon is proven to have violated the DMA, the company could face fines up to 10% of its worldwide annual sales.

Back in Japan, this is not the first time that Amazon has gotten into tangles with its competition authorities. Last March 2018, the regulator raided Amazon Japan for suspecting the company of making suppliers pay part of the costs for selling their products at a discount on the website. Later in September of the same year, the authorities accepted an Amazon Japan plan to improve its business practices.