According to the Competition Board decision dated 19.10.2023 and numbered 23-49/940-M, an investigation was initiated about D-Market Elektronik Hizmetler ve Tic. AŞ (Hepsiburada) in order to determine whether the automatic pricing mechanism it offered for the use of sellers in multi-category e-marketplace market violated the Act.

The automatic pricing mechanism, which was put into practice by Hepsiburada in June 2023, is actually a system which automatizes the rivalry among sellers to appear in the buybox. It is inevitable that the same product is sold by more than one seller in e-marketplaces. Basically, buybox gathers the products that are sold by more than one seller under a single heading. With this system, the product which is displayed as a result of the search is the product of the seller who wins the buybox. When the user clicks on “Add to cart” or “Buy now”, the product of that seller is added to the cart.  Therefore, it is very important for the sellers in the marketplace in terms of visibility and sales to appear in the buybox. 

Under the scope of the automatic pricing mechanism, sellers are offered “Match the Buybox Price”, “Stay below the Buybox Price” and “Stay above the Buybox Price” options and they can update their prices automatically by taking the price of the seller who wins the buybox as a reference price.

The concerns in the investigation focus on the point that the sellers may be less likely to set their retail prices at different levels and there may be price rigidity in platforms as a result of the increase in the number of the sellers who use the automatic pricing mechanism, especially “Match the Buybox Price” rule in the future.

While the investigation was ongoing, the commitments submitted by Hepsiburada were found sufficient to resolve the competition problems and rendered binding according to article 43 of the Act no 4054 and the investigation was terminated for Hepsiburada with the Board decision dated 03.10.2024 and numbered 24-40/951-410. 

The commitments of note are as follows:

• Hepsiburada will omit “Match the Buybox Price” option from the automatic pricing mechanism and offer the sellers only “Stay below the Buybox Price” and “Stay above the Buybox Price” options; also will arrange “Stay below the Buybox Price” and “Stay above the Buybox price” options in a manner that they will not produce the same result as “Match the Buybox Price” option (for instance not being able to write “stay above or below 0% or 0 TL” in terms of percentage and amount).
• Hepsiburada will continue not obliging the sellers to use automatic pricing mechanism and not offering any incentive that may create the same results as obliging sellers.
• Hepsiburada will not consider the use of automatic pricing mechanism by sellers as a criterion in the functioning of the algorithm in terms of buybox criteria.