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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#391

Post by fmajid »

eljimmy wrote: post #24

My spending on Amazon has diminished significantly due to the flood of Chinese copycat brands and products on there. Wish there was a way to filter out products by their country of origin. Is there any alternative out there?

Amazon has actually been requiring vendors to supply this info for a few years now. They have it in their database, but refuse to expose it. The Indian government forced them to, mostly because they are in a cold war with China and want to wean themselves off from Chinese goods.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#392

Post by FeistySkink »

low_key wrote: post #323
candiddevmike wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud anyone who leaves a non 5 star review, gets contacted by the company with bribes to make it 5 stars, and updates their review to report the company doing that.

I've left negative reviews and they tend to get removed. I was once even warned by Amazon that my account could be deactivated for violation of the ToS after posting a review that pointed out all of the other fake reviews on a particular product. Apparently the ToS allow fake reviews and disallow shining a light on it.

Amazon Vine is a thing, so of course they encourage fake reviews of free products.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#395

Post by dtgriscom »

sanitycheck wrote: post #246

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

I tend to check 3-star reviews; you (hopefully) find out what's wrong with a product, but not from someone who hates it and may focus on trivialities just to trash it.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#397

Post by aenis »

Interesting in how it resembles the situation in traditional retail.

FMCG companies typically pay a lot of money in so called trade funds to the likes of Walmart, Tesco, and others. One company I worked for spent Approx 20pct of its topline a year on that - double digit billions. Ostensibly, this is to place the product on the right shelves, run promos and have the products featured in the chains' newsletters.

The real reason is, however, efficient taxation. The "trade funds" make all the profit for legacy retailers. Branded products are sold at near zero, or sometimes - if allowed - negative margins. The operating companies make near-zero taxable profits. The marketing spend is typically channeled to different legal entities than actual sales and taxed "efficiently". I think it might be the same with Amazon.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#398

Post by silisili »

noncoml wrote: post #312
yalogin wrote: post #306

Over the last few years Amazon has been overwhelmed by Chinese goods and over time the search results has become similar to aliexpress. I would have never heard the manufacturer’s name and will never remember them either. All of them have close to 5 star rating and there is no way to even judge if they are any good. You buy if you accept that. Feels like it’s time for this to be disrupted.

When it came to shopping I used to blindly trust Amazon. Wouldn’t even check prices anywhere else. Now, it’s always the choice of last resort. I really don’t like it when I have to shop on Amazon. It feels like a combination of AliExpress and eBay. Delivery times are getting worse by the day too.

Came to say this. Some locations must still have it good, but where I live in the US, delivery dates are 7 to 8 days. Almost every retailer is way faster than Amazon.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#400

Post by oliwary »

fmajid wrote: post #244

Amazon is the third largest advertising company after Google and Meta. Its ad revenue is $32B (and growing fast, the run rate is $40B). That is half the revenue of AWS, which is worth 70% of Amazon's market cap. The inescapable conclusion is that Amazon's advertising is worth the remaining 30% of Amazon's market cap and Amazon's e-commerce arm is deemed worthless by Wall Street , its only purpose being to support the…

The same can be said for airlines, which are often worth less in total than their loyalty programs: https://thehustle.co/10052020-airline-loyalty-programs/

Of course, these loyalty programs would be worthless without the airline itself as rewards.

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