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Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

themarkup.org

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Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#31

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

deelowe wrote: post #18
tryptophan wrote: post #16

I get anxiety shopping on amazon now. I just can't deal with 50 pages of options, all from "different" brands, selling the same mass produced chineese shit. Will not be renewing prime. There is a real opportunity for focused web stores out there. Selling only 1 type of product, filtering out crap, having good search, etc...

100% agree. I used to avoid walmart or lowes for things that fit into the category of "I need something to do x, but don't have the time to research it properly" and instead use amazon as I would generally end up with a better product in the end. These days it's the opposite. Fakes, clones, and outright scams have taken over. For the products I do have intimate knowledge of (e.g. hand tools or cables) amazon routinel…

> amazon routinely buries the quality products and presents crap.

Not just crap, crap w/ 4.5 star ratings - that when you check find it's 1 star after 1 star after 1 star.

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#32

Post by jaywalk »

gruez wrote: post #21
only_as_i_fall wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's different is that Amazon is also an extremely dominant platform for other stores. It'd be like if Walmart came to your small town and signed a deal with the local government that stores had to carry their brands in addition to their own or pay higher taxes. The problem isn't the mere existence of store brands, but the use of anticompetitive practices to promote those brands.

>It'd be like if Walmart came to your small town and signed a deal with the local government that stores had to carry their brands in addition to their own or pay higher taxes. Not really? You can get around amazon's "extremely dominant platform" by setting up a shopify store. I'm not sure how that can be compared to the government forcing you to amazon.

How is setting up your own store "getting around" Amazon's dominant position? Obviously anybody can sell their own shit on their own website, but that doesn't change the fact that buying something online defaults to checking Amazon for a very large portion of the online public.

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#33

Post by greenail »

tryptophan wrote: post #16

I get anxiety shopping on amazon now. I just can't deal with 50 pages of options, all from "different" brands, selling the same mass produced chineese shit. Will not be renewing prime. There is a real opportunity for focused web stores out there. Selling only 1 type of product, filtering out crap, having good search, etc...

The problem is that you flip your problem from a huge selection of items in a big store to a big selection of stores with a small selection of products. Why do you think you wouldn't have a similar level of anxiety picking from lots of boutique stores?

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#34

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

bookoisseur wrote: post #30
merricksb wrote: post #23

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28851484 (548 points/1 day ago/230 comments)

This is a different investigation using scrapped data not internal documents?

Agreed. Can we axe the Dupe tag?

The Reuters article and this one are two separate investigations, examining different sources.

@dang (does this work? how does one summon dang?)

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#35

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

vishnugupta wrote: post #8

A related article https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-i... tl;dr "Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show"

Same topic but it's a diff investigation of diff sources.

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#36

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

LegitShady wrote: post #10

I completely stopped using Amazon about 8 months ago and I found I just end up spending less money overall. I skip impulse buying lots of junk I might have bought with a prime subscription and on many items I have ended up buying the cost of a local store is similar or better. The best days of Amazon are behind it.

> The best days of Amazon are behind it.

I use Prime (free via ISP) less because their search is (intentionally, I believe) utterly broken.

My last Prime purchase used Google image search; item I bought never shows up on Amazon searches.

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#37

Post by only_as_i_fall »

gruez wrote: post #21
only_as_i_fall wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's different is that Amazon is also an extremely dominant platform for other stores. It'd be like if Walmart came to your small town and signed a deal with the local government that stores had to carry their brands in addition to their own or pay higher taxes. The problem isn't the mere existence of store brands, but the use of anticompetitive practices to promote those brands.

>It'd be like if Walmart came to your small town and signed a deal with the local government that stores had to carry their brands in addition to their own or pay higher taxes. Not really? You can get around amazon's "extremely dominant platform" by setting up a shopify store. I'm not sure how that can be compared to the government forcing you to amazon.

And then you get far less traffic than you would if your product was listed on Amazon.

In the traditional brick and mortar situation you can open your own shop next to the Walmart or Target or whatever and have roughly the same visibility. In the online space though rolling your own shopify store is a massive handicap similar to if you weren't allowed to build within 5 miles of a large box store for fear of competition.

A huge number of people literally only shop on Amazon or at least look at Amazon before other locations because they believe it to be representative of the marketplace at large. Maybe that's their loss, but when you also consider Amazon's huge logistics network that nobody else is allowed to use.

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#38

Post by dhimes »

merpnderp wrote: post #3

I don't trust Amazon ratings even a little bit. But I do expect anything Amazon branded to at least not be complete garbage. Maybe this is Amazon just embracing the fact no one can trust their ratings, but can somewhat trust their product partnerships?

Do you mean, as in turning their broken rating system into a strategic advantage? Damn, that's pretty brilliant actually.

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#39

Post by mfer »

gruez wrote: post #26
mfer wrote: post #12

This is an element that's different from a typical store. In a typical store that has store branded items they will be on shelves side by side with the other brands of the same product. What Amazon does is the equivalent of putting their products up front and the alternatives (even those that are better rated) in a back room.

>What Amazon does is the equivalent of putting their products up front and the alternatives (even those that are better rated) in a back room. Is amazon burying results on the second or third page of the results or something? If it's one row down on the results page, it's closer to being one shelf down (which stores are known to do[1]), than "in a back room". [1] https://traxretail.com/blog/eye-level-buy-level-import…

When I go to the grocery store, for example, the items are side by side on the same shelf. GIF peanut butter is next to the store brand at the same eye level.

When I look for something on Amazon the higher rated item is often below the fold. Being below the fold makes a huge difference to buyers. Sometimes I see it on the second page.

These are two very different ways of displaying things.

Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products

#40

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

kova12 wrote: post #25
diego_moita wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in: "yes, I am lying, but so does everyone else. What's the big deal?" If all you want is to be lied to or cheated then I guess it makes sense.

If I was to choose between Amazon and somewhat equal third party brand, I would pick Amazon brand every time. Reviews are manipulated all the time. When I buy amazon brand, I know that product has honest reviews and a seller that backs the quality guarantee. This is not a lie, that's the fact.

> When I buy amazon brand, I know that product has honest reviews and a seller that backs the quality guarantee. This is not a lie, that's the fact.

I accept as fact that you believe it.

As recently as yesterday, I found Amazon items w/ 4.5 * rating and topped with 1 * reviews. I find insufficient reason to trust anything on Amazon by default.

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