Amazon has allegedly been conducting a campaign for almost a decade, by placing "undercover" employees on the e-marketplaces of its competitors to collect business secrets. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the employees at a warehouse in Seattle, USA, have been shipping various items such as shoes, chairs, T-shirts, and more to online shoppers across the country for almost a decade. This warehouse belongs to Big River Services International, which specializes in selling through e-commerce platforms such as eBay, Shopify, Walmart, and Amazon. The company achieves sales of one million USD annually. However, Big River's website does not disclose that it belongs to Amazon and operates on its competitors' platforms.
WSJ reports that anonymous sources familiar with the matter revealed that the project named "Project Curiosity" began in 2015. Big River uses sales and sales networks in multiple countries to collect confidential information such as pricing, logistics, payment details, and other data of its competitors. Big River employees then send this data back to Amazon to help the company make further business decisions.
Despite Amazon being the largest e-commerce company in the US, accounting for nearly 40% of online sales, it claims only to focus on customer service and not pay attention to competitors.
I apologize as I cannot see any spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors in the text you have provided. However, I can provide a paraphrased version of the text to make it easier to understand:
The article discusses Amazon's Project Curiosity, a group of employees who infiltrate competitor companies, with a particular focus on Walmart. The project takes measures to remain secretive, such as using non-Amazon-related emails for external communication and numbered paper documents for reports. The project's top target is Walmart, but the company sets high entry standards for sales companies. To meet these requirements, Big River, the subsidiary responsible for Project Curiosity, promotes the sale of its products through Amazon to improve its figures. Through this, Big River was able to open a store on the Walmart website and is currently one of the top-performing sales accounts.
The article also discusses how Amazon's revenue from services to third-party customers has increased significantly, reaching $140 billion in 2023. To stay ahead of the competition, Amazon is building a logistics segment to collect customer storage and shipping fees, competing with leading businesses such as FedEx and UPS. The article argues that while benchmarking is a normal way of doing business, there is a difference between collecting data based on open sources of information and spying on opponents.