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Selling Lemons

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Re: Selling Lemons

#81

Post by supriyo-biswas »

jp57 wrote: post #4

... [W]hile shopping online for a sleep mask. Brands like MZOO, YFONG, WAOAW popped up, .... The long tail of generic brands on e-commerce platforms is a textbook lemons market: good products get drowned out by these alphabet soup products. I've found the emergence of these anti-brands to be fascinating, if also annoying. They are not really brands at all. The purpose of a brand is to signal something about who made…

I have nothing to contribute to this discussion, but the points you brought up had the effect of making me view Amazon’s private labels in a more positive light, as in theory, it can be a good differentiator for quality.

Re: Selling Lemons

#82

Post by slg »

johnfn wrote: post #47

> I thought about this last week while shopping online for a sleep mask. Brands like MZOO, YFONG, WAOAW popped up, and these seemed less like companies and more like vowel smoke ejected from a factory flue hole, then slotted into a distribution platform I find this ironic. I swear by MZOO eye masks. They are so much better than anything you can buy in a pharmacy. They are vastly more comfortable, and they do a signif…

It isn't ironic, that is the whole point of a Market for Lemons, the inability to distinguish a good product from bad before purchase due to asymmetric information. That is why I think the author makes a mistake saying that it has no relation to enshittification.

The ultimate problem here is that MZOO's incentive to maintain their level of quality isn't very strong. There is little preventing them from slowly make their product cheaper and cheaper until they are delivering the same quality of those other brands. That would be the same process as enshittification. The primary difference is that enshittification can happen for other reasons such as a monopoly while a Market for Lemons is specifically because information asymmetry.

MZOO might be good now, but the economic incentives suggest they are just in the first stage of this process. It would take an owner committed to quality to not succumb to those incentives and it's impossible for us to know if MZOO has that type of owner.

Re: Selling Lemons

#84

Post by lemonlearnings »

jp57 wrote: post #4

... [W]hile shopping online for a sleep mask. Brands like MZOO, YFONG, WAOAW popped up, .... The long tail of generic brands on e-commerce platforms is a textbook lemons market: good products get drowned out by these alphabet soup products. I've found the emergence of these anti-brands to be fascinating, if also annoying. They are not really brands at all. The purpose of a brand is to signal something about who made…

Australia Kmart got a good round of applause recently on HN and I think it was because of this reason. MZOO prices but with Kmart brand curation (they use their own brand name Anko alot but under the hood must be different suppliers etc.). Not sure how they do it and pay all that staff and rent, but they do!

Re: Selling Lemons

#85

Post by aanet »

johnfn wrote: post #47

> I thought about this last week while shopping online for a sleep mask. Brands like MZOO, YFONG, WAOAW popped up, and these seemed less like companies and more like vowel smoke ejected from a factory flue hole, then slotted into a distribution platform I find this ironic. I swear by MZOO eye masks. They are so much better than anything you can buy in a pharmacy. They are vastly more comfortable, and they do a signif…

Literally, anecdata

Re: Selling Lemons

#86

Post by fsckboy »

mikepurvis wrote: post #52
fsckboy wrote: post #43

just a quibble, a lemon market is not a stage of a market, it's a market with information asymmetry which affects prices which affects market participation. the Amazon mixing of products from separately sourced vendor inventories or luxury goods with counterfeiting competitors, or buying jewelry from a jeweler creates lemon markets for those products. used markets do have the nature of lemon markets, and once you dis…

> "descending into lemonhood" is not a progression of markets It takes time for the participants to respond to the lemon market conditions, eg buyers to make purchases that are bad, so that they come to distrust the sellers, and then sellers with quality goods taking them elsewhere because the buyers are now pricing everything as if it's going to be a lemon. The transition from healthy market to lemon market once the…

markets can fail ("descend") for many reasons that are not lemon information asymmetry

lemon markets never stop descending till all honesty is gone

i see a point in maintaining the distinctions.

Re: Selling Lemons

#87

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

_kidlike wrote: post #73
rjh29 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it detracts from his point - there are so many almost identical brands that you can't tell what's good and what's bad anymore. Hopefully, MZOO will establish word-of-mouth reputation much like Anker did.

I still can't believe that Anker has not completely dominated the market... I almost always see other inferior brands when people pull out their powerbanks.

Anecdotally I've had a lot of problems with Anker products over the years. On two separate occasions my power banks died while I was travelling. I had a few Ravpower products that were at least as good. And now Ugreen seems to be producing good stuff.

I don't think there is any stickiness here, and it's a cutthroat market. These things are all at a price point where there will never be a winner-takes-all.

Re: Selling Lemons

#88

Post by lifestyleguru »

redleader55 wrote: post #76
lifestyleguru wrote: post #31

I'm torn about online dating. It figures the real market value, the real league of possible partners, as we established that real life pick up is unwanted and creepy. Our value and league are not what we'd want and expect, no surprise. Honestly tinder shows me profiles of all potential partners with comparable wealth, age, and status within my area which I recognize from closer and wider circle of acquaintances. Even…

> real life pick up is unwanted and creepy The act of "pickup" is creepy because it's based on a false pretense - establishing a human connection and trust quickly. Succes is guaranteed only for the sociopaths. Talking to people in real-life, without the help of technology is not creepy and doing it casually just for the sake of human contact is what all of us should be doing more. We would be able to filter out the…

There are many countries where on attempt to small talk they will death stare and squash you into the ground, or laugh off. Actually... most of countries in Europe.

Re: Selling Lemons

#89

Post by xboxnolifes »

johnfn wrote: post #69
rjh29 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it detracts from his point - there are so many almost identical brands that you can't tell what's good and what's bad anymore. Hopefully, MZOO will establish word-of-mouth reputation much like Anker did.

MZOO is the #1 brand that comes up when you search sleep mask on Amazon.

Yes, but you can't know that the #1 brand is actually good, or just chance. Does every #1 brand that shows up actually offer the best product? Or is this one instance a happy accident?

Re: Selling Lemons

#90

Post by Ekaros »

fsckboy wrote: post #43

just a quibble, a lemon market is not a stage of a market, it's a market with information asymmetry which affects prices which affects market participation. the Amazon mixing of products from separately sourced vendor inventories or luxury goods with counterfeiting competitors, or buying jewelry from a jeweler creates lemon markets for those products. used markets do have the nature of lemon markets, and once you dis…

Now I wonder did any unscrupulous company secretly perform supply chain attack against competition by inserting poorly made copies of the competitors products in Amazon's comingling... Potentially even a profitable or cost neutral venture...
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