A discussion of quality and accountability as it relates to products sold over e-commerce was cosponsored by UCLA's Center for Global Management and Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy as part of International Education Week 2024.

Global market platforms play an increasingly critical role in the world’s economy. In 2023 alone, nearly $575 billion worth of merchandise was sold through Amazon. Notably, over 60% of that merchandise was sold not by Amazon itself, but by third-party sellers using Amazon’s platform.

With roughly 4.5 billion items sold by U.S.-based sellers alone in 2023, the question arises: who is responsible for the quality and legality of these products? If a product is faulty or counterfeit, is Amazon liable, or is it exempt from responsibility as a platform? Where can consumers seek legal redress, and which governments are responsible for oversight?

These questions are not unique to Amazon. Similar issues arise with other global e-commerce platforms such as Temu, Wish, and AliExpress, meal delivery platforms such as Grubhub and Just Eat, and ride-hailing platforms such as Uber and Lyft.

On November 13, in UCLA Anderson’s executive dining room, students of management and law joined the UCLA Anderson Center for Global Management (CGM) and UCLA School of Law’s Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy (LMI) for the inaugural discussion of the 2024-25 academic year of their joint Global Business and Policy Forum series, now in its 12th year.

The discussion centered around the broad landscape of business and legal challenges posed by global platforms. Christopher S. Tang, Edward W. Carter Chair of Business Administration and Faculty Director of the CGM, first set the stage from a business standpoint and spoke about liability from a product safety and consumer protection perspective and discussed some of the issues/challenges of physical goods and different platform operations.

Michael Dorff, Professor of Practice and Executive Director of the LMI, then reviewed the issues from a legal standpoint, and considered U.S. law, E.U. law as well as Chinese law. The session then transitioned into a broader discussion and interactive conversation between Professors Tang and Dorff, which brought out other themes as they explored these timely and relevant issues relating to physical goods and services and e-commerce and social media platforms.

The conversation considered whether platforms should be considered more as intermediaries or as direct sellers when it comes to legal responsibility and whether it is ethical for platforms to absolve responsibility for the actions of third-party sellers, as well as a discussion around the appropriate role of business ethics in guiding decisions about liability.

The speakers also explored which countries should be responsible for regulating platforms and whether regulation should be concentrated in the platform’s home country, or whether each country should regulate platforms’ conduct that occurs within that country’s borders. Platform-seller issues as well as the impacts of global platforms on small, local businesses were also addressed.

Current students from across Anderson’s MBA, MSBA, and Ph.D. programs and the Law School’s LLM, JD and MLS programs attended the evening that began with a networking reception and concluded with a networking dinner.

Following the discussion, the in-person student audience engaged in interactive table conversations and analyzed the issues from both a business and legal lens. Students reflected on the discussion and shared their views on what steps platforms should take to combat the sale of counterfeit goods or shoddy/dangerous goods and whether they will be able to maintain customers’ trust if they do not take adequate steps. Students also considered how global platforms will continue to evolve, and what that might mean for competition and market entry strategies for small and medium-sized businesses.

The discussions were thought provoking and raised many issues from both a business and legal perspective and provided students with the opportunity to hear and learn how these issues are analyzed and considered from both sides.

The forum was a featured event of UCLA’s 2024 International Education Week and was broadcast live and attended by many additional students and alumni, as well as members of the broader UCLA and general communities. The Global Business and Policy Forum is a collaborative partnership between the Center for Global Management and UCLA School of Law's Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy.

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Published: Monday, December 16, 2024