Person discovers Amazon's business model. Writes about it.
Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#12This 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.
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#13Not sure why this is a problem. They could ONLY sell Amazon-branded items on their website if they really wanted to. It's their store.
I think stories like this show up because there is a set of Amazon users that still want it to be a neutral marketplace where Amazon doesn't have a vested interest in one product selling over another. That hasn't been true for quite a while though.
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#14I like Benedict Evan's perspective on this https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/3/28/amazon-pri... > Retailers have sold private label products for a century or more. Is something different when Amazon does it?
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.
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#15It's their platform. Apple pre-installs its own apps. Every convenience and grocery store does the same thing with their store-brand products.
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#16I 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...
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#17It's their platform. Apple pre-installs its own apps. Every convenience and grocery store does the same thing with their store-brand products.
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.
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#18I 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 routinely buries the quality products and presents crap. And this isn't a price thing. Even affordable, quality options get buried despite being less expensive than the clones and fakes. It's even worse when amazon has their own competing product.
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#19Amazon branded items don't bother me much, personally. I've found they're always reasonable quality at good prices. I've had an amazon backpack that I used for years before the pandemic, an Amazon mouse that I've been using for years, and so on.
No, what really irks me about Amazon is when I search for something and find a thousand products of different brands that are essentially the same, none of which are what I'm looking for. Usually this happens when you want something really specific.
One example, I was looking for a moss pole to train my tropical houseplants on. A requirement for me is a pole with real moss: coco coir doesn't hold enough moisture to build aerial roots on a tropical plant. I search "moss pole" on amazon and for pages and pages I only see coco coir poles of the exact same design (I tried this again right now and I see there's exactly one pole with real moss on the first page, an improvement for now)
This phenomenon has happened to me multiple times, where my search results in dozens of brands of seemingly identical products that aren't in the least what I want. Combined the usual quality problems of these nameless brands, it gets very difficult to buy anything on Amazon unless I already know the exact brand to buy from.
Re: Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products
#20How is this different from generic products being promoted at stores?