Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#331

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

Gustomaximus wrote: post #164

cs702 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Speaking as a longtime customer, I agree: this is what Amazon's behavior feels like to me nowadays. Search no longer works well for me. Reviews and product ratings are no longer trustworthy. The authenticity of products in key categories (e.g., electronics) can no longer be taken for gra…

Does it though? 1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. 2) Given purchasing power scale and people like fast delivery there will only be a handful of companies that can complete with Amazon ever, so it seems unlikely there will be a 'started in the garage' business compete with them now the market is maturing. 3) With the extra profit Amazon are making vs a competit…

I guess the problem is, if I want, for instance, electronics, I know several retailers I can go to (some with specialties narrower than that). But for a lot of products, where else am I even going to look?

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#332

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #291

Gustomaximus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it though? 1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. 2) Given purchasing power scale and people like fast delivery there will only be a handful of companies that can complete with Amazon ever, so it seems unlikely there will be a 'started in the garage' business compete with them now the market is maturing. 3) With the extra profit Amazon are making vs a competit…

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently." -Warren Buffett

Except people do, because they know that reputation matters little and even the biggest fiasco is forgotten under a year.

Catchy quotes are nice, but need to be checked against the real world.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#333

Post by tehwebguy » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

Not sure if your observation is one but many examples I hear about Amazon pricing seem to miss the fact that a growing percentage (recently at like 53%) are sold and priced by third party sellers.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#334

Post by nkurz » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

chabes wrote: post #269

NegativeK wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a sibling comment pointed out, cheapest doesn't trump everything -- otherwise we'd be ordering from Aliexpress. I've spend _way_ too much money on climbing gear in the past three years, very little of which was on Amazon. I simply can't risk getting counterfeit safety-critical goods. And while I'm not worried about counterfeit mops, I have noticed that the Amazon first habit is now broken in general.

> I simply can't risk getting counterfeit safety-critical goods. That’s a good call. I usually buy direct from someone like Black Diamond when it comes to things like that. Also, like with most industries , it helps to have a friend with a pro deal, if you’re trying to save money on important stuff. I’ve found that AliExpress is good for cheap electronics that I don’t mind waiting for, but not much beyond that. I hav…

I usually buy direct from someone like Black Diamond when it comes to things like that.

Interesting example. Did you see the recent story about Black Diamond sending a cease-and-desist to Walmart demanding that they stop advertising their products: https://www.retaildive.com/news/black-diamond-demands-walmar...

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#335

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

Gustomaximus wrote: post #164

cs702 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Speaking as a longtime customer, I agree: this is what Amazon's behavior feels like to me nowadays. Search no longer works well for me. Reviews and product ratings are no longer trustworthy. The authenticity of products in key categories (e.g., electronics) can no longer be taken for gra…

Does it though? 1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. 2) Given purchasing power scale and people like fast delivery there will only be a handful of companies that can complete with Amazon ever, so it seems unlikely there will be a 'started in the garage' business compete with them now the market is maturing. 3) With the extra profit Amazon are making vs a competit…

I don't think that Wall St would accept Amazon going back to the money losing days -- they would pay a high price.

You're starting to see competitors react effectively. WalMart is investing alot on the pickup strategy. Target has upped their game with small box shipments from stores. We stopped almost all purchasing that we did at amazon for household goods -- in many cases Target is providing next day delivery via USPS from a local store.

From my POV, I have a growing list of items that I cannot buy from Amazon. Electronics are fake, perishables are usually near the sell by date, household stuff like soaps and kitchen consumables are 30% more expensive, etc. The magic of amazon was that it was simple. No longer.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#336

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

naravara wrote: post #267

Gustomaximus wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it though? 1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. 2) Given purchasing power scale and people like fast delivery there will only be a handful of companies that can complete with Amazon ever, so it seems unlikely there will be a 'started in the garage' business compete with them now the market is maturing. 3) With the extra profit Amazon are making vs a competit…

>1) The day Amazon feel threatened they can become the cheapest in the market quickly again. Only if they're being vigilant. Usually the threats to a company's business model come from places they don't expect, so by the time they feel squeezed it's already too late. Consider the examples of RIM and Microsoft. > 2.) Given purchasing power scale and people like fast delivery there will only be a handful of companies t…

Call me unimaginative, but I find it unlikely that online retail can be supplanted by some completely different product the way that Blackberries could.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#337

Post by qubax » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

> Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly.

That's the assumption of google/youtube, facebook, microsoft, etc. Once you reach a dominant position, you don't have to care as much. You even see this with netflix.

> A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Ebay - identical item on Amazon was $33.95 (both including free shipping but Amazon came with an additional 8.25% sales tax).

Bingo. Amazon used to be where the best prices were. Now so much of their products are more expensive than what you'd find in your local supermarket. And they are significantly more expensive.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#338

Post by Aunche » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #62

arbuge wrote: post #19

Their basic underlying assumption appears to be that they're no longer in danger of losing customers and can now act accordingly. Now that they've captured 50%+ of US ecommerce, they've also raised many prices, to the point where they're far from the cheapest price in many cases. A random example... the cat litter I just purchased is $17.89 at Amazon, $13.49 at Walmart. Last week I bought a chair mat for $21.95 on Eb…

Perfect customer retention is not their goal. If selling 100 for $70 gives $7000 in revenue and selling 70 for $100 gives $7000 in revenue and the inverse relationship is linear, they should sell 85 for $85 and get $7225 in revenue. They have created solid economies of scale that others can't match. Together with the massive amount of customer data they are in a position where they can optimize their prices and respo…

> The long term goal is dynamic pricing for the perfect price discrimination (personal pricing). Detect when the customer is tired or stressed and show higher prices. Detect price conscious customers and show them lower prices. Maybe Alexa can trained detect the mood from the tone of voice and exploit that.

Now that's some baseless speculation if I've ever seen any. People aren't stupid. They start noticing that prices are cheaper at Walmart, they'll go back to shopping at Walmart.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#339

Post by skinnerp » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

m-p-3 wrote: post #3

Is there an addon of some kind that exists to make those ads more obvious (some kind of highlights) without outright removing them?

Sponsored products can be removed by using any of the major ad-blockers. When I worked at Amazon we actually worked with the add-on authors to make this easier. Previously sponsored products were present but looked kind of broken when using ad-blockers, so we added some hooks and contributed rules to the plugins.

Re: Amazon is stuffing its search results pages with ads

#340

Post by kaitai » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

ckastner wrote: post #139

apersona wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? It seems like a hard problem - eBay suffered from this too for their goods,Yelp with reviews. I doubt it's just a "I don't care" kind of thing.

> How would you solve the counterfeit goods and preventing people from gaming the review system problems? No idea what do to about the reviews, but the first step to the counterfeit goods problem is simple: once you've received X complaints about a counterfeit product, stop selling the product . Continuing to sell a product for which there are numerous and credible indications that they are counterfeit is borderline…

This just can't work on a logistical level. Let's look at diapers. There are lots of reports of counterfeit Huggies and Pampers. In some cases, it's true -- they're counterfeit.

Recently, though, Huggies changed the 'movers & poopers' line or whatever they call it. Since consumers didn't know about the change beforehand (new leg-hole shape, for instance) there were many reports that those were counterfeit, and Huggies had representatives deployed to answer Amazon reviews that showed the legit redesigned diapers and falsely called them counterfeit.

Moreover, what would happen to Amazon if they stopped selling Huggies and Pampers? Collapse! or maybe just a 20% loss of revenue! Do you know how many people go Prime purely so they can get their diapers autoshipped? and the formula, and the breastmilk bags, and the wipes? My family signed up for Prime solely because of baby crap, and once that baby crap is not needed, Prime ends. But for most people, Prime continues from baby to toddler to whenever they remember to stop auto-renewing. This is a huge market.

Amazon cannot afford not to fix their supply chain legitimacy issues. But they can't just stop selling the product. Agree that it's fraudulent to keep selling counterfeits, agree that they need to fix it or all those Prime parents are going to switch to Target for their brand-name diapers. It's not simple, though.