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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#681

Post by csunbird »

tgma wrote: post #467
timClicks wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not capitalism, that's culture. In the USA, it's very common to return products because of a change of mind and/or complain. That isn't universal.

The fact that a retailer is willing to accept it despite not being forced to is absolutely the result of capitalism. If they don't, you buy from a competitor. This is not some hypothetical. People in the US routinely choose retailers based on their service experience. In any case, the overall retail experience is much better on west side of the Atlantic and prices are generally better too, without the need of too man…

But, the usual case is that the major companies in the market collude to strip away these kind of offerings, as "free unconditional returns" hurts bottom line of all companies in the market. This is the real power of capitalism.

Think about it, for example the TV sector: All companies colluded to reduce the selection of TVs to "Smart" TVs only. I can't just go and buy from a competitor, because it simply does not exist!

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#682

Post by bloggie »

brazzy wrote: post #234
alexathrowawa9 wrote: post #114

Throwaway here but I used to work in Alexa org at Amazon and was amazed by how big the org was (thousands and thousands of people) considering it doesn't seem to be a big revenue generator I remember constantly hearing about projects other teams were working on thinking "why would anyone use that" or "how would that ever make money" Just trying to shoehorn alexa into as many domains as possible It was like empire bui…

I guess that's what happens when you're generating absurd amounts of revenue and want to "reinvest" it all: anything that even vaguely smells of "innovation" gets money thrown at it like crazy, and you end up incentivizing bullshitting.

My optimistic side tells me that Blue Origin was founded as a tech lab / app lab / skunkworks and not necessarily as a company with the goal of putting humans in space, that has suffered from said bullshitting. But my cynical side tells me the latter.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#683

Post by rvnx »

rickdeckard wrote: post #628
asfodelsu wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places in Europe: Normal price per item big letters, price per Kg small letters. Problem solved

Comparable unit-pricing: A mandate brought to you by the European Union. You know, this allegedly evil entity that always hassles with the free market and annoys global companies. /s

The same with this "metric system"

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#684

Post by Aeolun »

dsclough wrote: post #520
crazygringo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a million times. I swear I will never understand why Amazon's supply, organization, and pricing for household goods is such a disaster. Because their experience for mainstream books is mostly perfectly fine -- there's a single listing for each book, and the price doesn't change much, just some discount from list. It works. But for things like paper towels or Tide or whatever, it's utter chaos. Multiple listings…

The crazy thing to me is that you’re confused about this. These companies make huge margin fooling consumers who aren’t paying attention. Nearly all the consumers I know are barely conscious, the first promoted link on Amazon is the one they buy. Losing customers like you who actually inspect the listed price is a pittance to the Amazon machine. How much time have you spent in physical stores observing the physically…

Probably stuck in a local optimum.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#685

Post by bombcar »

prepend wrote: post #432
ghaff wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd not even that I care much about small deviations--I just don't trust that something really crazy won't happen if I put it on autopilot. If I walk into Walmart and grab a big armful of Bounty I'm fairly confident things will be fine.

I switched to Walmart a few years ago and their online experience has been more consistent. Although I detect it’s starting to drift as they switch to a “marketplace” approach similar to Amazon.

The marketplace stuff is the killer and downfall of any online shopping experience. Right now Walmart is easy enough to search and target and Home Depot are pretty good too, but once they start really focusing on the marketplace where they just make money with no expenses then it all goes to hell.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#686

Post by Bluestein »

mlsu wrote: post #553
dsclough wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crazy thing to me is that you’re confused about this. These companies make huge margin fooling consumers who aren’t paying attention. Nearly all the consumers I know are barely conscious, the first promoted link on Amazon is the one they buy. Losing customers like you who actually inspect the listed price is a pittance to the Amazon machine. How much time have you spent in physical stores observing the physically…

It’s a slog to do the “which one of these is least a ripoff” calculation, at the grocery store or online. I try to do the calculation nonetheless. But every time I just need to buy some ordinary staple, I’m up against the Relentless Spirit of Pure Deception, who attempts an ever evolving and always brand new form of trickery, at every engagement. Sometimes, I simply make the $1.00 donation to P&G or whoever just to a…

We will all end up having to walk around with an AI shopping assistant that can do all these pricing calculations and comparisons for us.-

(Other than biases, them AI's being "mindless" might be an advantage here ...)

  PS. Until we go so so multimodal that they start to be influenced by packaging size, bright colors, rounding, and big breasts.-

  PSS. Heh. Perhaps the ultimate Turing test is when them AI's start to be influenced by marketing, and shady practices thereof.-

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#687

Post by bombcar »

ssl-3 wrote: post #579
jonhohle wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Amazon when Fresh was rolling out in Seattle. A coworker thought he was ordering 10 bananas but when his order arrived he received 10 bunches of bananas. Generously, he brought them in to share along with the story. I’m sure they made a lot of banana bread the following week.

Same, but different. I once ordered qty. 6 bananas from Instacart, expecting one fairly-medium bunch of bananas to show up with about 6 fruits in that bunch. The listing clearly showed that it was for "quantity", not "weight." But I got 6 pounds of bananas, which is a ton for a single person living by themself. [And I don't bake, so I got plenty of fresh potassium that week.] It only happened once. After that, I star…

It’s not only Instacart. The first target that I ever went to that had a grocery store had turkeys that had been labeled at $.25. Not $.25 a pound. I pointed it out to the cashier multiple times and she couldn’t understand what I was complaining about so eventually, I went home with my $.25 turkey.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#688

Post by bombcar »

Hextinium wrote: post #560
toasterlovin wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their search result page is just a ranking of whatever they predict will sell best based on your query (based on units, not dollars). It’s stupidly simlistic, actually: if we sell more for a given search term because we’re advertising hard on that search term, our organic ranking for that term will rise almost immediately. So in your case, what’s going on is that basically other people who search with the same term e…

But think about the corollary where places like McMasterCarr have exact products in known quantities, types and breakdowns because they used to be a catalogue. I will go to McMaster 9/10 times because it's just easy to find exactly what I want and so they get my money. Amazon seems hostile to this very idea, that I know what I want, will spend 15% more to have it tomorrow and will not by the random stuff it smashes i…

Did you know that Amazon has a section that drives to compete with McMastercar? It’s somewhere in Amazon business they have parts and stuff and it’s just a horrible shit show.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#689

Post by teapot7 »

asfodelsu wrote: post #611
xp84 wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unit price labels here in the US are hilariously messed up. The items you want to compare will be say, a pack of 6 granola bars or a 10 pack. The unit prices will be like: #1: $0.37 / ounce #2: $6.50 / pound or even: #3: $1.82 / each (a price per item) This will even be common within the same exact brand too. The stores seem so bad at picking a consistent unit for a product category that it seems malicious, but i…

In many places in Europe: Normal price per item big letters, price per Kg small letters. Problem solved

Australia too.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#690

Post by bombcar »

oblio wrote: post #575
dchftcs wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases the retail store just doesn't list the price and the store owner may just come up with a highly marked-up price when asked. 10x would be very rare though indeed.

That only happens in shady mom and pop corner stores where laws are not enforced. Most countries force price listing and it's trivial to get caught.

You will see 10 X but it’s in places where it’s considered emergency go to the 24 hour gas station and look at the price of diapers or butt wipes compared to Walmart.
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