Between this issue, the general untrustworthiness of the reviews, and the fact that I can quite often find a better deal on masking tape, undershirts, or whatever else at my local brick-and-mortar store or a more specialized big-box retailer’s website, I actually rarely shop at Amazon anymore. I do still buy there—especially for certain categories, such as streaming videos—but I used to do SO much of my shopping at Amazon. All in all, Amazon just doesn’t feel to me like the outstanding store, the “shiny object” that I once thought of it as—it feels much more like a typical “rent-seeking” operation. But clearly they aren’t suffering for it—so they must be doing something right. *shrug*
I’ve found myself searching for products first at Target or BestBuy (or even my neighborhood grocery store) before looking for products on Amazon. I’ve been burned repeatedly by poor quality products on Amazon (electronics, cookware, appliances) and other retailers just do a better job of stocking trustworthy products. I DID buy some books today from Amazon. Maybe they should focus on that product line for a while.
I always give BestBuy the first shot. It makes me sad they were trash for electronics 10+ years ago and the main thing that's changed is the good stores all went out of business. They're only the "good" store by virtue of not being the absolutely bottom of the barrel trash heap that Amazon's become.
Sadly everyone is trying to copy Amazon's worst trait and it's hard to find an online store that doesn't have a 3rd party marketplace.
There's a HUGE opportunity for retailers to become Amazon alternatives, but they keep copying Amazon instead of trying to be better than Amazon. Remind me why all these visionless CEOs deserve so much money.
Completely agree. I used to shop on Amazon for everything besides groceries and diy raw materials. EVERYTHING else was amazon.
Now, I look at other options first. Even if I find it on Amazon I will try to find it elsewhere because of the knock-off product and fraud problems.
My trust (and money) was theirs to lose, and they did.
Same and that explains why it feels like there's so much garbage on top of garbage and nothing decent quality on Amazon anymore. Cheap trash has higher margins and more money for the advertising budget.
I guess I should have figured out something was up when I was browsing for a Raspberry Pi and got a snow shovel as "frequently bought together" right after a snow storm where I happen to live. I mean, maybe (?), but how many people are logging in to buy a Pi and a shovel?
Yes, and I feel old now. But I admit their return policies and custom service are superior here to most other online shops. If it is available for a similar price in a suspicious online store, I prefer Amazon to avoid some risk.
When you walk in a traditional store and there's a big display of Coca Colas arranged like a turkey right at the entrance for thanksgiving that's not the store trying to help the consumer. This is just how stores have always been merchandised.
When a store owns its own inventory it is natural to tailor recommendations to optimise margin gain - its largely testament to the technological illiteracy of brick and mortar stores that margin is rarely factored into personalised web positions such as search results. It is very much factored in when designing store layouts, catalogues, and ad campaigns.
In all these other places there is a contention between getting the customer exactly what they might want (discovery) and getting the customer to buy what you want. Note that stores want the customer to buy items that will most cost them (overstock) as well as items that will most profit them.
This way the store manages this contention becomes a key part of its public image / brand, and affects its long term perception and customer base.
How this heavy push from personalised recommendations to personalised advertising will affect amazon is going to be interesting.
Those advertising categories are nearly identical to the product recommendations: both are collaborative filtering algorithms. Thinking that one framed as an as vs product suggestions seems naive to me. They fill the pages with more products to click with the best efficiency they can muster.
At what point does this start to cut down on actual sales volume?
eBay (mentioned in the article) has gotten pretty bad in this way lately. There are plenty of categories where the sponsored listings are a tiny or non-representative subset of the whole.
So if you start browsing by jumping from suggestion to suggestion, you rapidly exhaust the available paid listings. Will customers recognize they aren't seeing everything, then continue to dig and search to find more, or will they decide they're out of luck and leave?
I could imagine tweaking it to a feed where paid listings are n times more likely to be shown, but filling in a few slots from random unadvertised products in the category.
