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Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

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Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#411

Post by dymk »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #293
dymk wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimizing revenue given a particular supply and demand isn't price gouging. People are paying for the convenience of buying anything they want with two clicks from their computer chair, turns out that's pretty valuable.

That isn't what the parent said: > Detect when the customer is tired or stressed and show higher prices. Detect price conscious customers and show them lower prices. Has nothing to do with supply and demand.

Behavioral economics would like to disagree. Supply and demand are a function of what buyers want; somebody wanting something _right now_ has been a force that markets cater to since markets have existed.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#412

Post by Drdrdrq »

emodendroket wrote: post #336
naravara wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. Only if they're being vigilant. Usually the threats to a company's business model come from places they don't expect, so by the time they feel squeezed it's already too late. Consider the examples of RIM and Microsoft. > 2.) Given purchasing power scale and people like fast delivery there will only be a handful of companies t…

Call me unimaginative, but I find it unlikely that online retail can be supplanted by some completely different product the way that Blackberries could.

VR / AR? Or just a better business model that caters customers' needs better...

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#413

Post by zanny »

Amazon is the first trillion dollar company at the same time I went out of my way to order shirts and guac mix from walmart.com because I have way more faith in products I find in the page or two of results I get there than from the thousands on Amazon, 99% of which are buried in fake reviews for fake products.

And I do it substantially cheaper. I even checked this week when I was in a physical store to compare prices and I was paying the same for the freely shipped stuff on the website as I would have going into a location. Competitive Amazon products had at least a 30-40% markup, even for the same brand.

And thats all on top of knowing how reprehensible a company Walmart is, but its not like Amazon is any better nowadays. At all.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#414

Post by emodendroket »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #412
emodendroket wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me unimaginative, but I find it unlikely that online retail can be supplanted by some completely different product the way that Blackberries could.

VR / AR? Or just a better business model that caters customers' needs better...

Well, I can only speak for myself, but every time I've used VR I've become nauseated, so I'd rather drive to the store if that's how shopping is done in the future.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#415

Post by tomcam »

I consult for some of Amazon's biggest sellers. They absolutely have to pay for these ads to compete. Amazon fees all in can easily reach 25% of the retail price, and that's assuming you're paying very close attention. They skyrocket if you decide to take a pee and leave your analytics dashboard closed for a few minutes!

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#416

Post by shogun21 »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #293
dymk wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimizing revenue given a particular supply and demand isn't price gouging. People are paying for the convenience of buying anything they want with two clicks from their computer chair, turns out that's pretty valuable.

That isn't what the parent said: > Detect when the customer is tired or stressed and show higher prices. Detect price conscious customers and show them lower prices. Has nothing to do with supply and demand.

It has to do with demand.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#417

Post by tomcam »

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

This speaks to a bigger issue, which is that retail is hard. Now that Amazon can let down its hair and start charging prices that may actually be sustainable, we are learning that the local retailers it's driving out of business were actually fairly efficient. They didn't have the luxury of charging below-retail for 20 years, so they didn't look as attractive as Amazon did during that same period.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#418

Post by LinuxBender »

bradleybuda wrote: post #183
philipov wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Sounds like an antitrust issue. Great example of how it doesn't take full monopoly-scale control for markets to break down.

Maybe Amazon is behaving badly, trying to scam customers by selling them fraud products at inflated prices. Is the best response to that to enlist the federal government to make them run their business differently? Or may we could just, you know, take our business elsewhere?

Amazon is a giant tax revenue generator for state and federal governments. It would take something quite significant to get to that level, in my humble opinion.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#419

Post by rossjudson »

prostoalex wrote: post #355
jdeibele wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can substitute Google Photos for Amazon Photos. I have several Google accounts that have soccer photos, family photos, etc. I want to keep pictures of other people's kids from trying to be recognized as my own. And the family photos account can be be given to someone else to control without giving access to my email. You get 15G of storage with unaltered originals, unlimited if you let them compress. If you set u…

Amazon is free for uncompressed, though.

Amazon Photos offers unlimited full-resolution online photo storage, and 5 GB free video storage, to Prime members

I hear video is pretty popular these days.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#420

Post by adameast9000 »

__jal wrote: post #375
Gustomaximus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it though? 1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. 2) Given purchasing power scale and people like fast delivery there will only be a handful of companies that can complete with Amazon ever, so it seems unlikely there will be a 'started in the garage' business compete with them now the market is maturing. 3) With the extra profit Amazon are making vs a competit…

No, the issue they should care about is that I'm losing trust in them, for a number of reasons, and (anecdatally) I'm not the only one. - Are they taking me for a ride on price? I don't optimize this enough and do overpay because I'm lazy, but there have been multiple times lately that they gave me a price that was just stupidly high. - Is this the kind of product that will cause their screwed-up warehousing system t…

Somewhat related, there's a chrome extension called honey that will compare the final price (incl. tax) of all sellers for a product listing and add the best one to your cart. I've saved tons of money in some situations where an alternate seller had no taxes, was cheaper but longer shipping, etc...

It's still frustrating the lengths I have to go to to get a fair deal on Amazon. there's so much anticompetitive behavior (showing their own products first on searches, defaulting to products sold by amazon, hiding competitor listings [search for chromecast]) and they show little interest at changing behavior to make the customer experience better (even on glaring issues like fake reviews / counterfeit products) because there is no competition. I have contributed, been suckered in to the 'Prime' bandwagon, rarely shopping around on price, and often buying 'Amazon's Choice' products, which are almost certainly a sham.

Refreshing to see people on here bucking that trend. I'm trying to commit to the same, hopefully Amazon one day feels pressure to change.

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