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Shopping Sucks Now

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Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#21

Post by AlexandrB »

Reedx wrote: post #3

Anyone working on a Trader Joes meets Amazon? That curates maybe 1-3 versions of things, largely eliminating paradox of choice. I guess Costco is kind of a bulk version of that... Also I've been increasingly interested in just buying things once and having them last a decade+, ideally a lifetime (less waste). But this takes a lot of research. Trader Joes does a good job of curating groceries and I've come to trust th…

Hilarious. Aren't you basically advocating for a planned economy? Just with a corporate, instead of a government, bureaucracy.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#22

Post by cbdumas »

"Shopping" on Amazon.com is not a good strategy IMO. It's always best to find something you want on another, more specialized site (forum, review aggregator, specialized review site, etc.) and then look for the item you want somewhere online. Amazon, walmart, alibaba et al. are more like UI's for a warehouse for me at this point.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#23

Post by umvi »

ropiwqefjnpoa wrote: post #2

Something that has been lost is genuine reviews. First you have all the sponsored reviews and then all the equally worthless "I don't know how to use it so it's junk" or "it never arrived" 1 star reviews. And so many "review" sites look like they've been procedurally generated then SEO optimized and filled with ads.

Currently I only trust reddit for "genuine" reviews. Seems like Amazon reviews these days are gamed to the max. Once companies figure this out and reddit has a high degree of astroturf it will be impossible to find out what normal, unbiased (as in don't have an agenda) humans think about a product.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#24

Post by Wowfunhappy »

The author could just buy whatever gloves are marked as "Amazon's Choice".

Of course, then she is assuming that Amazon has her best interests at heart, and hasn't just chosen whichever product makes them the most money.

But, by shopping at a store with a more limited product selection than Amazon, you are relying on the same assumption. Also, the assumption is almost certainly wrong in all cases.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#25

Post by floren »

amluto wrote: post #19
floren wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman? But then when the version from Alibaba is total crap, there's no recourse. It's not like a local shop with reputation at risk. The unfortunate reality these days is that the majority of items on, say, Amazon, are the same crap from Alibaba…

> The unfortunate reality these days is that the majority of items on, say, Amazon I find “on, say, Amazon” entertaining. Amazon may well be the worst largeish US online vendor. It’s gotten to the point where I trust eBay more. If you want winter gear, buy from one of several excellent online stores dedicated to it.

If I want winter gear, I'll physically go to REI or Sportsman's Warehouse and buy a coat that actually fits.

I was actually thinking about my recent experience trying to buy a $5 Monoprice USB-PS/2 converter when I typed my original comment.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#26

Post by quink »

For finding what particular type or model of random good to buy I’ve become utterly dependent on just adding ‘reddit’ as a search term.

Living in Australia, adding ‘ozbargain’ and ‘whirlpool’ instead to another two searches to follow up completes the trifecta.

I just hope Google never optimises for that because then the content of bad reviews will shift to and overwhelm these sites instead. When a metric starts being the target it ceases to be a good metric.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#27

Post by lr »

I do really feel badly for (mostly) young people who have no frame of reference for things other than Amazon and comparison websites. I would probably never go to Amazon for something like gloves (or most other things) because you have no idea what you are going to get. When I do know what I want, the first place I try to buy it from is the company that makes it. If they don't sell it direct, then they will probably tell you who does. If they have their own store on Amazon, I will use that, even if other providers on Amazon are selling it for less.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#28

Post by pkilgore »

If you're interested in a deeper treatment of these issues check out the 2004 book [1] The Paradox of Choice.

Some interesting notes from follow-up research [2]:

> In a meta‐analysis of 99 observations (N = 7202) reported by prior research, we identify four key factors—choice set complexity, decision task difficulty, preference uncertainty, and decision goal—that moderate the impact of assortment size on choice overload. We further show that each of these four factors has a reliable and significant impact on choice overload, whereby higher levels of decision task difficulty, greater choice set complexity, higher preference uncertainty, and a more prominent, effort‐minimizing goal facilitate choice overload. We also find that four of the measures of choice overload used in prior research—satisfaction/confidence, regret, choice deferral, and switching likelihood—are equally powerful measures of choice overload and can be used interchangeably.

[1] https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780060005696

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jcps.2014....

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#29

Post by jkhwleroiu »

egypturnash wrote: post #12

When I was living in the PNW and realized I direly needed gloves, I just hit up a few of the department stores downtown until I found some that met my criteria. Which are probably similar to those of this author, I wanted some that looked cute, had a conductive patch on the finger so I could use my phone without taking them off, would fit on my long hands with long fingernails, and weren’t super expensive gloves desi…

The problem is that even in big cities, real world shops are disappearing.

This year I wanted to buy a TV, and wanted to see them in real life to judge colors/brightness levels, and shockingly, in London, I found just one place which had like 10 TVs from the leading brands. I'm sure there are a few more, but I wasn't able to locate them using google, or walking the main shopping streets. I remember shops 10 years ago which had acres of electronics (albeit in a different country).

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