巨型在线零售商亚马逊垄断力量

2014-10-28 17:49:01来源：网络

　　And the same is true of Amazon today.

　　同样的说法今天对亚马逊也是成立的。

　　If you haven’t been following the recent Amazon news: Back in May a dispute betweenAmazon and Hachette, a major publishing house, broke out into open commercial warfare.Amazon had been demanding a larger cut of the price of Hachette books it sells; whenHachette balked, Amazon began disrupting the publisher’s sales. Hachette books weren’tbanned outright from Amazon’s site, but Amazon began delaying their delivery, raising theirprices, and/or steering customers to other publishers.

　　如果你没有关注最近亚马逊的新闻，我来介绍一下：今年5月，亚马逊和大型出版社阿歇特(Hachette)之间公开爆发了一场纠纷，并演变成了商业大战。亚马逊要求从阿歇特销售图书的收入中抽取更多分成，阿歇特不愿意提高抽成，于是亚马逊开始干扰这家出版社的销售。亚马逊网站并没有完全禁止销售阿歇特的图书，而是开始拖延配送、提高价格，甚至还会把顾客引向其他的出版商。

　　You might be tempted to say that this is just business — no different from Standard Oil, back inthe days before it was broken up, refusing to ship oil via railroads that refused to grant itspecial discounts. But that is, of course, the point: The robber baron era ended when we as anation decided that some business tactics were out of line. And the question is whether wewant to go back on that decision.

　　你或许想说，这只是做生意，和标准石油被拆分之前的做法没什么区别——拒绝通过不愿向该公司给予优惠折扣的铁路输送石油。可是重点当然也是这个：我们这个国家当时决定，有些商业行为太过头了，于是“强盗大亨”(robber baron)的时代结束了。现在的问题是，我们愿不愿意撤销那个决定。

　　Does Amazon really have robber-baron-type market power? When it comes to books, definitely.Amazon overwhelmingly dominates online book sales, with a market share comparable toStandard Oil’s share of the refined oil market when it was broken up in 1911. Even if you lookat total book sales, Amazon is by far the largest player.

　　亚马逊真的有“强盗大亨”似的市场控制力吗?谈到书，它的确有。亚马逊压倒性地控制了在线图书销售，市场份额与标准石油在1911年被拆分前，在精炼石油产品市场上的份额相当。即使参考总体的图书销量，亚马逊也能以极大的优势占据头把交椅。

　　So far Amazon has not tried to exploit consumers. In fact, it has systematically kept priceslow, to reinforce its dominance. What it has done, instead, is use its market power to put asqueeze on publishers, in effect driving down the prices it pays for books — hence the fightwith Hachette. In economics jargon, Amazon is not, at least so far, acting like a monopolist, adominant seller with the power to raise prices. Instead, it is acting as a monopsonist, adominant buyer with the power to push prices down.

　　目前亚马逊还没有尝试压榨消费者。实际上，它为了强化主导地位，一直在系统性地保持低价。它所做的实际上是利用市场地位挤压出版商，即压低自己为买书付出的价钱，于是就有了与阿歇特的冲突。用经济学术语说，亚马逊并没有，至少现在还没有，像典型的垄断企业那样运作，即卖家利用市场控制力来提高价格。但它的确是一个垄断买方——有能力压低价格的占据主导地位的买家。

　　And on that front its power is really immense — in fact, even greater than the market sharenumbers indicate. Book sales depend crucially on buzz and word of mouth (which is whyauthors are often sent on grueling book tours); you buy a book because you’ve heard about it,because other people are reading it, because it’s a topic of conversation, because it’s madethe best-seller list. And what Amazon possesses is the power to kill the buzz. It’s definitelypossible, with some extra effort, to buy a book you’ve heard about even if Amazon doesn’tcarry it — but if Amazon doesn’t carry that book, you’re much less likely to hear about it in thefirst place.

　　而在这一方面，它的力量的确强大，实际上比其市场份额数字所显示的还要强大。图书销售在很大程度上依赖于公众的关注和谈论，正因为如此，出版方才会让作者疲于奔命地参加活动推介新书。你买书是因为听说过这本书，因为其他人在读，因为它成了议论的话题，因为它登上了畅销榜。而亚马逊所拥有的，就是扼杀公众关注效应的实力。多花一些精力，肯定可以买到你听说过，但亚马逊不卖的书。但如果亚马逊不卖那本书，你听说那本书的可能性本身就会小很多。

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