In addition to challenging traditional retailers on many fronts, with vast shipping and fulfillment operations and a marketplace to shore up its endless aisle, Amazon is staking a claim in merchandising both commodities and specialties, with its own private and exclusive brands encompassing categories from batteries to mattresses.
As a tech company as much as a retailer, Amazon has been able to leverage data from brands — those sold on its primary site as well as through its third-party sellers — to develop products that are good enough or close enough to the originals, usually at lower price points, and thereby gain an edge.
