Competition Authority ended the investigation into Hepsiburada

The Competition Authority made a statement today and Hepsiburada announced that the investigation carried out against him was terminated.

The detailed explanation on this subject is as follows: happened: “In accordance with the Competition Board’s decision dated 19.10.2023 and numbered 23-49/940-M, D-Market Elektronik Hizmetleri ve Tic. An investigation has been launched against AŞ (Hepsiburada) to determine whether the automatic pricing mechanism offered to sellers in the multi-category e-marketplace market violates Article 4 of the Law on the Protection of Competition No. 4054. The automatic pricing mechanism, which was implemented by Hepsiburada in June 2023, is essentially a system designed to automate the race between sellers to take part in the buybox. Since there are thousands of sellers selling in e-marketplaces, it is inevitable for the same product to be sold by more than one seller. Marketplaces have developed the buybox application because lining up hundreds of stores at the same time can make the shopping experience difficult when a user is looking for the product he wants to buy.

In its most basic form, Buybox collects these products under a single title if there is more than one seller of the same product. Thus, with the determined algorithm metrics, the seller who will provide maximum benefit to customers and win the buybox appears first when that product is searched. With this system, as soon as the user clicks on the “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button in the listed seller list, the product of the seller who won the buybox is added to the basket.

Therefore, being in the buybox is very important for sellers operating in the marketplace in terms of visibility and sales. Within the scope of the automatic pricing mechanism, sellers are offered options such as “Equal the Buybox Price”, “Stay Below the Buybox Price” and “Stay Above the Buybox Price”, and sellers can automatically update their prices through these options if they wish. The process of determining each rule is at the initiative of the sellers, and the price of the seller who won the buybox is taken as the reference price.

The concerns subject to the investigation are that in the future, the automatic pricing mechanism and especially the increase in the number of sellers using the “Equal to Buybox Price” rule, and as a result of the optimal operation of the mechanism by providing the desired results, the possibility of sellers setting retail prices at different levels will reduce the damage and the price increase depending on the cumulative effect on the product prices listed on the platforms. concentrated at the point where it may cause solidification.

While the investigation period was continuing, a request was made by Hepsiburada to submit a commitment, and the commitments submitted were deemed sufficient to resolve the competition problems and became binding in accordance with Article 43 of Law No. 4054, and the investigation was initiated by Hepsiburada with the Board decision dated 03.10.2024 and numbered 24-40/951-410. has been terminated.

Within the framework of the presented commitment text, Hepsiburada;

• -It will remove the “Equal to Buybox Price” option from the automatic pricing mechanism and will only offer sellers the “Stay Below Buybox Price” and “Stay Above Buybox Price” options. In addition, the “Stay Below Buybox Price” and “Stay Above Buybox Price” options will be arranged in a way that will not give the same result as the “Equal to Buybox Price” option (such as not being able to write 0% or stay below 0 TL or stay above in terms of percentage and amount). .
• -It will continue not to require the use of an automatic pricing mechanism for sellers and will not offer any incentives to sellers that would have the same effect as requiring it.
• -In terms of buybox criteria, the use of automatic pricing mechanism by sellers will not be taken into account as a criterion in the operation of the algorithm.
• -It will continue not to share data of other sellers regarding the use of the automatic pricing mechanism with sellers.
• -To ensure that compliance with the commitments can be monitored, it will submit a report to the Institution every year, starting one year after the notification of the reasoned decision.

Among the commitments in question, the “Equalize to Buybox Price” option from the automatic pricing mechanism must be removed within two months from the notification of the summary decision; Other commitments will be implemented with a summary judgment and all commitments will be invalid indefinitely.”