Amazon has launched new direct marketing features aimed at boosting sales for independent brands and merchants that may well prove to alienate customers on the platform.

The ‘Tailored Audiences’ tool was announced overnight at the Amazon Accelerate conference in Seattle, and will allow merchants to send emails directly to new shoppers, repeat customers, and their top buyers.

The tools also allows merchants to monitor the effectiveness of this direct marketing — or ‘spam’, as it has been known to be called.

Customers are able to unsubscribe if they don’t wish to receive the emails, however, this puts the onus on the user – many of whom will be rightfully annoyed by a flood of unsolicited marketing emails.

Under Jeff Bezos’ rule, Amazon was fiercely against allowing merchants to have such a direct line to its customers. This new ‘tool’ completely flips the script – and will no doubt be a controversial play for consumers – and eagerly taken up by sellers.

This comes on the same day that Amazon was hit with an antitrust lawsuit filed in California, which alleges the company blocks pricing competition, pushing up overall prices for consumers by blocking merchants from offering the same products at lower prices on other platforms – including their own websites.

“Through its actions, the everything store has effectively set a price floor, costing Californians more for pretty much everything,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

“Amazon coerces merchants into agreements that keep prices artificially high, knowing full well that they can’t afford to say no.

“With other e-commerce platforms unable to compete on price, consumers turn to Amazon as a one-stop shop for all their purchases.

“This perpetuates Amazon’s market dominance.”

Amazon argued it maintains the “right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively. The relief the attorney general seeks would force Amazon to feature higher prices to customers, oddly going against core objectives of antitrust law.”

A similar case was brought in Washington, and later dismissed – but the Californian antitrust laws are different to those in the capital state.