This article below is from today's NY Times. Amazon is now running promotions that specifically take sales from small businesses. Amazon seems to wish small businesses with physical stores would be 'showrooms' for Amazon's sales leads.
If a retailer knows of a brand that sells to Amazon, it may wonder why the brand is doing so.
December 12, 2011, 11:00 AM Amazon Denies It Has a Small-Business Problem By ROBB MANDELBAUM
THE AGENDA How small-business issues are shaping politics and policy.
For years — since its inception — Amazon has been at implicit war with local brick-and-mortar stores. Last week, the implicit seemingly became explicit when Amazon began a promotion that encouraged customers to check out prices at local retailers and use a specially designed "Price Check" smartphone app to report what they found back to Amazon. Customers who then purchased the same item from Amazon received a 5 percent discount, up to $5. (The deal was available only from Friday night through Saturday, and only for certain kinds of products.)
For its initiative, Amazon has been greeted with a barrage of rotten tomatoes, from the press and from small businesses and their sympathizers. (Gawker, for one, described it as "a Christmas attack on local shops" and a "cheap, sad thing.") On Thursday, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, the top Republican on the Small Business Committee, joined the fray. "Incentivizing consumers to spy on local shops is a bridge too far," she said in a statement. "During the busiest shopping season of the year, we should remember that our local restaurants, bookshops and hardware stores are the economic engines in our communities." Ms. Snowe urged Amazon to cancel the promotion.