of course they knew! They also know about all the FAKE REVIEWS that infested Amazon, and they're not doing anything about it because it boosts sales. Not only that, but I got banned from reviewing on Amazon after I posted a review that the product's reviews are probably fake (after checking on fakespot and receiving a trashy product).
Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
181–190 of 466 posts
Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a catch-22 ... would Amazon be this innovative had it been nationalised? At what point do you nationalise? Is there a next technology which will be stifled if it was nationalise? Does nationalisation sttifle innovation? I've been wrestling with these questions as I actually don't like Amazon for all the reasons that have been well publicised ... but their customer service is excellent. Which sets me against a st…
Amazon the marketplace isn’t terribly innovative. It’s a marketplace supported by fantastic logistics, and most of it is backed by USPS anyways. There’s only so much you can do to remove the pains from buyers, sounds like we’re there.
> and most of it is backed by USPS anyways
Amazon does not do business in US only
Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#183Thought exercise because I legitimately struggle with this. Is this fundamentally different than Costco using sales data to choose which Kirkland products to launch/sell? If so, how? If not, then why do we not pursue Costco with the same gusto as Amazon? To me this behavior by Amazon seems worse, but I can't figure out why.
I'm not sure if it's fundamentally different, but maybe you're just (like I am) more inclined to perceive Amazon as a "bad" company. Costco has a lot of goodwill with the public.
Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon pays mountains of payroll taxes, as they are one of the largest employers in the world. The "Amazon pays no taxes" meme is a false one.
Isn't it the workers who (whom? I never know) pay the payroll tax? That's their money, in exchange for their time spent on work, that's not Amazon's money. This doesn't make sense to me.
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Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#185Thought exercise because I legitimately struggle with this. Is this fundamentally different than Costco using sales data to choose which Kirkland products to launch/sell? If so, how? If not, then why do we not pursue Costco with the same gusto as Amazon? To me this behavior by Amazon seems worse, but I can't figure out why.
Imagine if a Costco sales rep offered to swap something in your cart with the Kirkland clone, or if they suggested the Kirkland product as you reached to grab something else off the shelf.
Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stallman said it too: https://stallman.org/amazon.html > We should not allow a company to have a share over around 10% of any market. If in a certain field a single dominant company is beneficial for society, that means it is a natural monopoly, and should be served by a regulated utility.
RMS is right about many things but not this one. Competition naturally leads to few companies capturing a market over a long period of time. What's however important is to prevent actively regulatory capture of said markets.
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Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#187Well, it's something that is slowly backfiring. It's under the eyes of everyone, and not enforcing such policy will only make it even worse for Amazon itself that eventually will end up selling only non-branded products. Finally it will be only another e-commerce like "ebay" used to be, and something else will replace it. Just enjoy the ride until you can. PS: speaking out of experience, I had one time a talk to a di…
AWS and Amazon Retail are two different entities altogether. Even their infrastructure are at least logically siloed and my educated guess is even physically siloed in some places.
AWS is certified to comply with a bunch of cloud/data standards/regulations such as HIPPA, PCI DSS and so on. Even if a single evidence is found that AWS is breaching them the consequences will be severe.
Also for Amazon as a whole it makes very little business sense to lose a AWS customer paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year just to gain some marginal advantage in retail space. Note that Amazon retail already is operating at the limit when it comes to having accurate sales information about its competitors. It has crawlers to scrape online data and employs hundreds of analysts to build multiple models. And it’s been on this for close to three decades. So trawling AWS customer data is net negative for Amazon. It doesn’t take much for competitors to move away to Azure of GCP.
So it’s in AWS’s best interest to be absolutely fool proof about not going anywhere near customer data. Dealing with business data is a whole lot different ball game compared to collecting tracking customer data like Google does. Businesses will be unforgiving.
Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#188Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#189Thought exercise because I legitimately struggle with this. Is this fundamentally different than Costco using sales data to choose which Kirkland products to launch/sell? If so, how? If not, then why do we not pursue Costco with the same gusto as Amazon? To me this behavior by Amazon seems worse, but I can't figure out why.
Disclaimer: I'm not a legal expert, just an engineer with my own opinions.
I struggle with it as well because conceptually in my mind this is the same as a grocery store using customer buying data to inform itself. Grocery chains have been using private label brands to compete with name brands for years. Check your cereal aisle for the "fruit loops" in the back without a box that are ~50% cheaper than the name brand boxed real fruit loops.
I never saw this as wrong growing up. I saw this as the store offering a cheaper comparable and consumers were able to chose which they want. In fact, the grocery store also controls what is on the end cap and what is on top and bottom of each shelf.
I think the landscape is heavily skewed in favor of the dominant online retail merchant. This skew and dominance is what causes people to claim afoul behavior is going on.
Re: Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales
#190Thought exercise because I legitimately struggle with this. Is this fundamentally different than Costco using sales data to choose which Kirkland products to launch/sell? If so, how? If not, then why do we not pursue Costco with the same gusto as Amazon? To me this behavior by Amazon seems worse, but I can't figure out why.
Suppose Costco allowed other vendors to be present and selling in their stores. Costco requires these vendors to use Costco's checkout systems. Costco then takes the data gleaned from those sales to determine which products to compete with and then begins aggressively pushing their competing product.
Is this fair to the vendors?