Not sure about this tbh.
Merge means only one faction kill per night instead of two. Emilia would remove Satella from the game.
Now naturally it always depends on who gets lynched but considering only these two factors this means 17 Town against 6 scum which is ok I think.
For the shop Town was sleeping. Moreover if scum decided to buy from the Mafia shop, they couldn't buy from the Town shop so naturally it's on Town's responsability for not using this mechanism. Like for example say, in Fuji's games where there's a map and you go explore locations and get items. If Town doesn't explore locations and only scum does then ofc scum gets an advantage. Same here. It's on the players that didn't use the mechanism presented to them in the game.