Amazon gathered its independent sellers from all four corners of the globe for its annual Accelerate conference. While the mood was enthusiastic, the crowd that gathered was concerned about two things: GenAI and logistics. One thing that didn’t show up: Relief over interest rate cuts.

Most of the sellers interviewed on site by PYMNTS were relieved that the Fed finally took action. But they were looking for more immediate relief than a gradual drawdown of interest rates would provide, and for the most part, they weren’t rushing to access any new funding anytime soon.

“One of the lessons I learned here is that funding is something you have to track in different ways,” said Richard Brown, proprietor of Cleveland-based sneaker accessory retailer Proof Culture. “Funding for my company is more about finding better payment terms than it’s about access to capital.”

“We just took our first loan this year (before the rate cut),” said Tulsa-based fishing accessory retailer Chill-N-Reel CMO Chris Diede. “Usually we put back everything we make into new products and content creation. But we realized that if we want to be the great American redneck brand, we need to make sure we have products in stock.”

Brown, Diede and other Amazon sellers were far more excited about AI in the context of their business than they were about interest rate cuts. And they weren’t disappointed. Amazon used the event to introduce a slew of AI applications, from the personal AI assistant Project Amelia to upgrades to AI-powered tools like Rufus to help customers make better shopping choices and analytics tools to help sellers understand why items get returned.

A big change is that all sellers using Amazon’s warehouses can now easily resell returned items, which the company says will increase their profits and offer more discounted products to customers. Amazon also introduced a new tool to help sellers avoid returns by offering free product support, which prevented 11 million returns last year. For cheaper items, sellers can now refund without requesting the product back.

While AI got much-deserved attention at the conference, it did so in the spirit of extending big business capabilities to SMBs. Sellers discussed using AI to create product images, tell their brand story and to access datasets that would help bring customer acquisition and retention costs down.

“Your brand story is how you differentiate yourself,” said candle manufacturer Hemlock Park Founder Mikey Kim. “It’s how you communicate quality. It’s how you get good reviews.”

Kim and other sellers also discussed their use of data, which one roundtable survey put at the top of the Amazon services list. Several of them described using sales and competitive data to pivot anything from product development to social media usage to entire business models.

“I’ve been telling all the other sellers here to shoot as much video as possible because you can slice it up and feed social platforms like TikTok — which has had its moment — and that expands your audience,” Diede said. “There’s more than 50 million fishing licenses in the U.S. and we’ve only old 300,000 products. That’s a lot of runway.”

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This optional program, which was previously available only to retail brands, provides a resell channel that helps sellers recover value on returned inventory and gives customers a greater selection of preowned and open-box products, Amazon said in a Thursday (Sept. 19) blog post.

In this program, items that are returned to Amazon’s return centers are inspected and then offered for resale, according to the post.

“Before an item can be sold through Grade and Resell, we conduct a comprehensive inspection to thoroughly test the condition of each item and provide a detailed description of its condition to make it easier for customers to make a more informed purchase decision,” Gopal Pillai, vice president, worldwide returns and reCommerce at Amazon, wrote in the post. “For electronic items, we will power on, test and factory-reset as part of the evaluation.

“Based on the quality check, each item will be assigned one of four listing conditions: ‘Like New,’ ‘Very Good,’ ‘Good’ or ‘Acceptable,’” Pillai added.

Grade and Resell joins the other options available to sellers using FBA in the U.S., which include Product Support, which aims to avoid returns by providing customers with help on product setup and other issues; FBA Returnless Resolutions that lets sellers grant refunds without requiring the customer to physically return the item; and FBA Donations that allows sellers to donate eligible products to families and individuals in need, per the post.

“If a customer decides to return an item, we make returns convenient and easy — working backwards from customer and selling partner needs to streamline the returns process,” Pillai wrote in the post.

Easy and convenient return and refund procedures are likely to attract customers, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Adobe collaboration, “The Online Features Driving Consumers to Shop With Brands, Retailers or Marketplaces.”

The report found that 47.1% of consumers take easy and convenient return and refund procedures into account when shopping on an online marketplace. The same is true of 27.9% of consumers shopping on a retailer’s website or mobile app other than the brand’s site and 25% of those shopping on a brand’s website or mobile app.

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The eCommerce giant revealed several enhancements to its merchant and shopper offerings at its Accelerate seller conference, according to a Wednesday (Sept. 18) press release.

Among the enhancements, participating brands using the Buy with Prime API can now offer PayPal at checkout once shoppers log in to their Amazon account, per the release.

Beginning in 2025, Prime members will be able to perform a one-time link of their Amazon account to their PayPal account. That means Prime shipping benefits will be available automatically whenever they use PayPal while shopping with Buy with Prime on participating merchants’ sites, according to the release.

Buy with Prime debuted in 2022 as a way for merchants to sell listed products directly from their websites. This year, Amazon has seen a more than 45% annual increase in Buy with Prime orders through merchant websites, with merchants seeing an average 16% increase in revenue per shopper after offering Buy with Prime, the release said.

Amazon has also seen more than 50% more Prime members shopping with Buy with Prime, with a 300% increase in the number of orders for Buy with Prime merchants during this year’s Prime Day 2024 event, according to the release.

PYMNTS examined the evolution of Buy With Prime earlier this year, noting that what began “as a straightforward opportunity for merchants to sell listed products directly from their websites has morphed into a powerhouse of possibilities.”

“The evolution includes automated marketing integration and partnerships with heavy hitters like Shopify and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, presenting merchants with fresh avenues for revenue and elevating the Prime membership experience for customers,” PYMNTS wrote in January.

Also Wednesday, Amazon announced the addition of a fully managed option to the supply chain services it offers to sellers, available for domestic pickups next month, with a global rollout expected by the year’s end.

“Sellers simply provide product details and pickup locations, and Amazon oversees the rest, including carrier pickup, inventory consolidation, strategic replenishment and placement into fulfillment centers nearest to customers, and continuous analytically driven optimization based on demand, inventory levels and costs,” said Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of worldwide selling partner services at Amazon. “It’s as easy as pushing a button, and sellers reap the benefits of working capital gains, increased sales and a lot less effort.”

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The new fully managed Supply Chain by Amazon solution will be available to all U.S. sellers for domestic pickups in October and will be expanded to global pickups by the end of the year, the company said in a Wednesday (Sept. 18) blog post.

The option offers a turnkey solution automating the movement of products through Amazon’s supply chain services, according to the post.

“Sellers simply provide product details and pickup locations and Amazon oversees the rest, including carrier pickup, inventory consolidation, strategic replenishment and placement into fulfillment centers nearest to customers, and continuous analytically driven optimization based on demand, inventory levels and costs,” Dharmesh Mehta, vice president, worldwide selling partner services at Amazon, wrote in the post. “It’s as easy as pushing a button, and sellers reap the benefits of working capital gains, increased sales and a lot less effort.”

Sellers can select to use this fully managed Supply Chain by Amazon option or to continue to choose which supply chain services they want to use and manage decisions on product movement on their own, per the post.

The fully managed option joins the range of supply chain services Amazon offers to sellers, according to the post. Supply Chain by Amazon allows sellers to leverage the company’s logistics, warehousing, distribution, fulfillment and transportation to move products from manufacturers to customers.

Hundreds of thousands of sellers use at least one of these services, and the number of sellers who use more than one of the services tripled in the first half of 2024, per the post.

“With Amazon’s years of supply chain expertise, we can keep products in stock, at the right locations, to deliver to customers at the fastest speed ever,” Mehta wrote in the post. “For sellers, rapid delivery is a big boost to their businesses because it drives increased sales conversion, and in fact, sellers are seeing that by using the fully managed option and having Amazon improve their delivery speed, their sales are increasing by an average of 20%.”

Amazon launched Supply Chain by Amazon in September, saying this comprehensive set of supply chain services will allow sellers to focus on product development and business growth, while Amazon takes care of the complexity of logistics.

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The eCommerce giant’s semi-annual sales event returns Oct. 8 and 9, with Amazon offering early holiday deals, according to a Tuesday (Sept. 17) press release.

“Whether Prime members are hoping to cross items off their gift lists early, looking forward to hosting joyful gatherings or scoring something special for themselves, Prime Big Deal Days is here for all their holiday needs and more,” Jamil Ghani, vice president of Prime Worldwide, said in the release.

Among the deals are discounts of up to 55% on Amazon devices, early deals from small businesses, and deals on travel offerings from companies like Carnival and Avis.

While this holiday shopping season is expected to be slower compared to last year, it will be driven by eCommerce sales, according to consulting firm Deloitte. The company projected last week that eCommerce sales will increase between 7% and 9% this season, to the tune of $289 billion and $294 billion.

“Our forecast indicates that eCommerce sales will remain strong as consumers continue to take advantage of online deals to maximize their spending,” said Michael Jeschke, principal at Deloitte Consulting, and the firm’s retail and consumer products lead.

Meanwhile, the August installment of PYMNTS Intelligence’s “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report,” the “Higher Perception of Inflation Drives Paycheck-to-Paycheck Consumers to Trade Down” edition, examined consumers’ deal-seeking behavior. It found that 63% of consumers live paycheck to paycheck, and their spending power is waning.

“Specifically, 60% of those who live paycheck to paycheck without issues paying bills and 72% of those who do so with issues paying bills said their income has not increased to offset inflation at all,” PYMNTS wrote in September. “As such, these shoppers are making more conservative budgeting decisions. Ninety-two percent of paycheck-to-paycheck consumers in the former category and 97% of those in the latter said they have taken actions to cope with price increases when buying retail products. Plus, 94% and 96%, respectively, have done so for grocery products.”

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The company is making these changes as part of its efforts to “operate like the world’s largest startup,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a message shared with the company’s employees and posted online Monday (Sept. 16).

In the case of managers, Amazon aims to flatten organizations by asking each of its S-teams, or senior leadership teams, to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of 2025, according to the message.

As the company grew its teams over the last several years, it also added managers and more layers than it had before, per the message. This has led to more meetings and more managers reviewing topics before they move forward.

“If we do this work well,” Jassy said of the move to have having fewer managers, “it will increase our teammates’ ability to move fast, clarify and invigorate their sense of ownership, drive decision-making closer to the front lines where it most impacts customers (and the business), decrease bureaucracy, and strengthen our organizations’ ability to make customers’ lives better and easier every day,” Jassy wrote.

Amazon began a series of layoffs in November 2022, with Jassy saying at the time that the company had hired rapidly over the previous several years. In January 2023, he said the number of layoffs would amount to more than 18,000.

On the issue of working from an office, Amazon is going to return to the practices it had before the pandemic, according to the message. That means employees being in the office except in “extenuating circumstances” like when their child is sick, there’s an emergency at home, they’re visiting customers or partners, or they need a day or two to finish coding in a more isolated environment, Jassy wrote.

Over the last 15 months, employees have been back in the office at least three days a week, per the message. But now it will no longer be “a given” that they can work remotely two days a week. This change will take effect Jan. 2.

Jassy wrote in the message that working from an office will make Amazon’s teams “better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business.”

It was reported in July 2023 that Amazon was ramping up its return-to-the-office mandate by requiring employees working remotely or in smaller remote offices to return to the company’s “main hub” locations.

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“This lawsuit sends a clear message that Amazon will pursue all measures to hold bad actors accountable and support our selling partners,” Kebharu Smith, director of Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit, said in a Monday (Sept. 16) press release. “The defendants in this case knowingly deceived Amazon’s selling partners, customers and store, or they helped to facilitate the deceptive conduct.”

The lawsuit named multiple defendants that Amazon alleged obtained invalid trademarks, used those trademarks to gain access to the Amazon Brand Registry, and then submitted false infringement notices to have their competitors removed from the store, according to the release.

The Brand Registry is a free service launched by Amazon in 2017 that helps brands protect their brand and intellectual property (IP) rights, the release said. The company’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit is a global team that partners with law enforcement, brands and other stakeholders to combat counterfeiters.

Amazon’s lawsuit also named two other defendants, alleging that they facilitated this scheme and collected fees from their clients to do so, per the release.

“This lawsuit intends to shut down defendants’ operation, preventing them from harming others across the entire retail supply chain,” Smith said in the release.

Amazon filed its first lawsuits targeting allegedly abusive notice submitters in 2023 and said the new lawsuit marks a new offensive against the practice, according to the release.

Since the company’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit was launched in 2020, the team has pursued litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement against 21,000 companies and disposed of 7 million counterfeit products, per the release.

When announcing the launch of the unit in 2020, Amazon said it blocked 2.5 million possible bad actor accounts and that there were over 6 billion suspected bad listings during the previous year.

The Counterfeit Crimes Unit has invested in advanced machine learning techniques to improve its proactive controls and counterfeit detection systems, Amazon said in November.

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“We’re always looking to make grocery shopping easier, faster and more affordable for our customers,” Claire Peters, worldwide vice president of Amazon Fresh, the company’s grocery arm, said in a news release Tuesday (Sept. 10).

The new campaign includes a “significant expansion” of Amazon’s exclusive Prime savings program at Amazon Fresh, both in-store and online, letting shoppers get discounts of up to 50% off eight to 15 rotating items, such as fresh produce or pantry staples, the release said.

The company is also adding Amazon Saver to its existing private-label offerings, which include Amazon Kitchen and 365 by Whole Foods Market. The new offering is a “no-frills” brand with most items priced under $5, per the release.

The announcement follows last week’s news that Amazon is expanding its footprint in the third-party grocery delivery space, allowing consumers in Seattle to order same-day grocery delivery from local merchant Metropolitan Market on Amazon’s marketplace.

On the opposite side of the country, Amazon is expanding its grocery delivery partnership with mid-Atlantic-based supermarket chain Weis Markets to six new locations.

“The move comes as Amazon looks to grow its presence in grocery — the one retail category in which it trails behind competitor Walmart by a wide margin,” PYMNTS noted in that report.

The most recent edition of PYMNTS Intelligence’s Whole Paycheck Report, “Walmart Holds Grocery Lead Over Amazon Despite Overall Share Declines,” showed that as of the second quarter of the year, Walmart drew a share of consumer grocery spending seven times the size of Amazon’s, at a respective 20% and 2.7%.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS examined consumers’ appetites for private labels last month in an interview with Bobby Watts of supermarket giant Ahold Delhaize USA.

“They’re not as brand loyal as they used to be,” Watts said. “… I think it’s [because of] two things. I definitely think that economic pressures are causing consumers to make choices … based on price or promotion or value. But we also see … the younger generation has grown up in a world where everything is instantaneous, and things are moving at such a fast pace that they’re willing now to experiment more and test different brands, whereas the other demographics may not be as apt to do so.”

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This fall, the company’s Just Walk Out technology will be in the most new stores to open at NFL stadiums in a single season, Amazon announced Tuesday (Sept. 3).

In addition, Just Walk Out (JWO) is being added to more college campuses, with more than 30 university stores around the world using the technology, which allows consumers to scan a credit card before entering the store, with Amazon charging them for the items they pick out.

“Last season, NFL game attendance reached a peak of nearly 19 million fans showing up to support their teams, and they don’t want to miss a minute of the action,” Amazon said in a news release. “Long lines for concessions have been a growing complaint of fans who want a speedier and more convenient shopping experience.”

To combat this problem, the company is opening six new JWO locations at Seattle’s Lumen Field: five traditional stores and one enabled with radio-frequency identification (RFID) which allows the “checkout-free experience to expand to clothing, hats, fan gear, and more.”

These new stores bring Lumen’s JWO total to 15, the most of any venue around the world, Amazon added.

As noted here last month, Amazon has recently introduced a new multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) system for JWO, designed to enhance the accuracy and scalability of checkout-free retail environments. Compared to its predecessors, which analyzed shopper actions sequentially, this new AI simultaneously processes data from a variety of sources throughout the store.

“We accomplish this by analyzing data from cameras and sensors throughout the store simultaneously, instead of looking at which items shoppers pick up and put back in a linear sequence,” Amazon said.

The system’s ability to learn and adapt is “particularly noteworthy,” PYMNTS wrote. Trained using a three-dimensional map of the store and a catalog of merchandise images it can understand the placement of fixtures and recognize products.

“This continuous learning capability suggests a future where retail environments become responsive to shopper behaviors,” PYMNTS wrote.

“Multimodal AI is a significant game changer,” Shawn DuBravac, CEO of Avrio Institute, a think tank studying emerging technologies, told PYMNTS. “It will drive advancements across numerous industries, leading to smarter, more adaptive systems that can understand and respond to the world in a more humanlike manner.”

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The glitch in the eCommerce site happened Friday (Aug. 30), preventing customers from completing their purchases, CNBC reported, citing reports from customers on social media.

The news network said Amazon’s Web Services division did not report any technical problems when the checkout feature was down. 

Amazon had been promoting discounts for a Labor Day weekend sale, though some members of the X social network said they weren’t able to buy products at a discount due to the glitch. Amazon’s Help account on X replied by suggesting users get in touch with the company.

PYMNTS has contacted Amazon for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

According to the report, Amazon has cautioned investors that technical troubles could drive down sales and harm perceptions of the company’s products and services. The company’s second quarter sales came to nearly $148 billion, a figure the report described as “healthy.”

In other Amazon news, PYMNTS wrote last week about reports that the company was planning an artificial intelligence (AI) overhaul for its Alexa voice assistant. The company plans to transform the free offering into a paid subscription service, according to a Washington Post report, citing internal company documents.

“The bigger picture here is the evolution of Amazon’s strategy for monetizing its AI services,” Ghazenfer Mansoor, founder and CEO of the AI company Technology Rivers, told PYMNTS. “For a long time, the company’s approach was simple: offer cheap or free services to attract people, then rely on selling products and advertising. But as the cost of developing and maintaining advanced AI capabilities rises, it makes sense for companies to start exploring other revenue streams.”

Meanwhile, PYMNTS also wrote last week about efforts by Amazon and rival Walmart to seize on consumers’ demand for digital restaurant ordering to fuel engagement with their paid memberships, providing dining benefits to make subscriptions more attractive.

For example, Walmart recently announced a partnership with Burger King, its first Walmart+ dining collaboration, while Amazon earlier this year expanded its arrangement with Grubhub to provide Prime members with free Grubhub+ subscriptions on an ongoing basis.

“We’re just trying to make it really simple for our members to not only find out about what value they have in their Prime membership, but also to actually benefit from it on monthly, weekly, daily basis — however it fits into their busy lives,” Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime, said in an interview with PYMNTS at the time.

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