131–140 of 727 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This questionable business practice is neither new nor limited to online companies. Brick and mortar companies like Costco do have their own products competing from other vendors, and I am sure they analyze sales data before jumping on selling their own.
Isn't that exactly what the grandparent comment said?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case it's shitty to be a supplier but isn't this great for the consumer?
Definitely not. Consumers are best served when you have a bunch of relatively equal players competing for their business, and where success is rewarded financially. That gives everybody an incentive to focus on continuously getting better at serving the customer through R&D, etc. But if the reward for success is just having Amazon come in and hoover up the money you would have gotten by launching a knockoff, then sud…
Stating the obvious I guess. All retailers do this and create their own white-label brands to squeeze profit from well-performing categories. Target, for instance, is very upfront about it and they have like a gazillion white-label brands that compete in hundreds of categories, which makes it very gray for the customer. Does anyone really think that any retailer launches a competing product in a category without look…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case it's shitty to be a supplier but isn't this great for the consumer?
No, this is not great for the consumer. It lowers the bar for everyone. What I find mostly on Amazon in the past year or so is cheaper imported versions of decent products. The decent products are hard to find or I have to look outside of Amazon. They've pushed out the quality and replaced it with higher profit junk. Its kind of the same thing with Home Depot. I used to be able to buy quality hardware from a local st…
I’m not an Amazon fan boy, but I am a Costco fan boy, and they do the same thing, so I don’t really think I can be too upset about this. Retail is ruthless.
I've lived in Kirkland, Washington, off and on since 1994. It's amazing how many people all over the world know of Kirkland from Costco branding. For a log time the reddit tag line[0] was "We're more than Costco!" [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Kirkland/
I always thought it was funny, as a young kid, that my city’s name was on all sorts of products, not making the connection.
Stating the obvious I guess. All retailers do this and create their own white-label brands to squeeze profit from well-performing categories. Target, for instance, is very upfront about it and they have like a gazillion white-label brands that compete in hundreds of categories, which makes it very gray for the customer. Does anyone really think that any retailer launches a competing product in a category without look…
This is totally false - the number of retailers who have testified before congress that they don't use seller data to compete against sellers - and then who go ahead and do just that is basically zero. Additionally, most other retailers actually BUY the third parties products and take the risk of promoting and selling it. On Amazon third parties take the inventory and many other risks and may have to pay amazon to pr…
why marketplaces are able to compete with their sellers is beyond me.
Why sellers would use a market place that is obviously going to compete with them is beyond me.
It is actually illegal in EU, I wonder the implications of these actions for them.
The key difference between what Amazon does and Costco/Walmart etc does, is that regular retail takes the risk of buying the product to resell, prior to gathering data and considering whether to clone it. Amazon is able to snoop on all the sales data without any risk.
We sell an ERP catered to distributors and many do sell on Amazon. I’ve always wondered why on earth they would continue to sell on a platform that’s constantly gathering their selling data, or even inventory if they’re going FBA, and eventually try to undercut them if their products sell well. Their response is usually “I’m making enough money now, why worry about later?” or “our product category is too niche for Am…