"it's about the scale that Amazon does it at"
"it's just they do it on a massive scale"
"This is something that Amazon is great at"
"Target is doing the same...but they just don't have the massive scale"
"As a consumer I love what Amazon is doing"
"Lots of respect to those guys"
"the most important advantage Amazon has: it has data...with this data, it enters markets and undercuts its competition at the perfect price point"
At some point I feel like I'm being astroturfed.
People are amazed Amazon sells pasta and batteries under their own brand? Sounds like Ikea to me.
Amazon has several problems they haven't corrected in years - generally not great prices, fake products being co-mingled with genuine items, fake reviews, flaky or slow shipping (esp. with their own delivery people). I've even had a few brand new books arrive with binding or cover damage. Ugh.
> People are amazed Amazon sells pasta and batteries under their own brand? Sounds like Ikea to me.
There's absolutely nothing interesting about Amazon doing this, it merely makes for a story because it's Amazon. Walmart has been doing it for 25 years as - by far - the world's largest retailer. They have four times the retail scale of Amazon. The Great Value brand is all over their stores, they also have numerous others such as Sam's Choice (since 1991).
Amazon's traditional online retail sales are close to growing at single digits now, they've seen a persistent slowdown quarter after quarter. Walmart's comps are the best they've been in a decade and their online sales growth has been accelerating again, climbing 40% in Q2 and 43% in Q3 (this is after rolling past the Jet.com numbers year over year as well; contrasted to eg 8% type online growth in 2016). If Amazon isn't careful, they're about to get their ass kicked in online retail. Unthinkable just a few years ago.
The difference between Walmart and Amazon is that Walmart is a major employer in small towns across America whereas Amazon is present only in a few large metro areas. When Walmart gets pressured because of some real or perceived issue, each congress person representing those districts goes to bat for Walmart. Maybe not publicly, but real politics is done informally and out of the public eye. Defense contractors learned this lesson long ago as well.
I agree that it helps Walmart more than it hurts them at this point. That's a large shift from ~20 years ago when the fear was very widespread that Walmart would destroy all the small towns and wipe out local employers. Now that Walmart is entrenched nearly everywhere locally, politicians want to keep those local jobs.
Amazon has a lot of warehouses and call centers in small towns. Not nearly as many in walmart obviously, but definitely more than a few large metro areas.
A bigger difference is that Amazons brands are stealth brands. In every big shopping store, I know which brands are the store brands. Not so with amazon.
I'd recommend taking a look at Walmart's clothing section. It's full of stealth brands. (edit: Forgot about Walmart's electronics section. I'm typing this on a really good mechanical keyboard sold under Walmart's "Blackweb" brand.)
> Amazon's traditional online retail sales are close to growing at single digits now
Amazon reported a 35% YOY growth in the US 3rd quarter, and 15% overseas growth and you call that "close to single digits"? What you didn't mention is Walmarts "crazy" 40%/43% growth in online sales puts it squarely in 4th with a whopping 3.7% of online sales, compared to Amazon sitting at, what 49%?
There's a lot of interesting things to discuss about Amazon's market dominance without misleading numbers used to imply Amazon's outlook is poor. Amazon currently holds almost 50% of the online retail market, while the next 9 companies share 20% and you're talking doom and gloom.
They really need verified vendors that Amazon can vouch for. These vendors would need to be tested without knowing by Amazon to make sure third party ones are not being sneaky. Especially if customers complain.
I'm wondering if the presence of fakes on Amazon (and the many complaints of them) are in fact helping Amazon's own branded items? Personally when I'm shopping for basics on Amazon I often just go for the AmazonBasics version because I can at least put a little faith in it. Whereas who knows where the other stuff comes from. Perhaps it's a feature, not a bug?
I have a similar take on the incentive misalignment with fakes + store brands.
Two counterfactuals to consider:
1. For this to be true, consumers will have to know Amazon is behind the brands. Works for AmazonBasics, but the ones in this story I'm not so sure since their providence is a bit buried.
2. Fakes appear more often in higher-end products. Store brands (like AmazonBasics, Kirkland, etc) are typically geared at low/med end of market.
Both of these hinge on brand perception. If Amazon can improve brand perception of their store brands, they're going to be more willing to say 'these are Amazon brands' on their listings. And the more they can do that, the more incentive misalignment exists on fakes. I don't think 'these aren't fake' is enough to improve brand perception alone as quality matters a lot, but it probably does contribute.
Of course, every retail category is different. I imagine there are some categories today where the intersection between fake problem + Amazon brand means the incentives are aligned to soft-pedal any real progress on fakes.
Can someone explain the fakes problem? I think J have literally never run into this on Amazon despite actively buying thousands of dollars of various items for years.
AmazonBasics also seems to be really solid stuff every time. I was assuming it was just a recommendation but the manufacturer and brand is someone else.
>Can someone explain the fakes problem? I think J have literally never run into this on Amazon despite actively buying thousands of dollars of various items for years.
There are several things that could be described by the 'amazon fakes' problem.
First, i want to say that when I do "shipped and sold by amazon" I almost never have problems sometimes they pack inadequately. But usually not, and more than once, they've sent me a case/box of something when I bought a single something, so I'm going to say the "shipped and sold by amazon" products are usually pretty good, if often more expensive than usual.
The problems usually start with the "shipped by X, fulfilled by amazon" though they can be reliably returned. The problems get worse when it's "shipped and sold by X" - often it is a pain to return those, too.
1. it is often that the reviews for several "similar" items will be consolidated somehow, so you'll get these really great reviews for... a thing that this is not. (this was intended, I think, for different sizes of the same item, for example, but it is sometimes abused)
This, in my experience, is pretty common. It's less common that it's flagrantly abused; usually it's just three related things where all the reviews are crunched up. But sometimes, there's a real stinker in there. Again, I think that the 'fulfilled by amazon' makes the cost of fraud higher, just 'cause it's so returnable. (on the other hand, I'm lazy and I'm paying for convenience. returning garbage is a pain in the butt)
When it is done, it's like, you get your new digital camera or whatever, it's generic as advertised, but it got a bunch of credible, good reviews, and the unit you got is essentially garbage.
This might be the most common scam I've seen?
2. there are a lot of shady sellers that claim to sell you brand X thing and then you get it and it's a "brand X" thing.
This doesn't happen as often, and it happens more when it's shipped direct than when it's fulfilled by amazon, but it happens, and has happened to me. Someone was selling pretty okay "Apple" chargers... I mean, they worked mostly okay? but they certainly weren't genuine as they were advertised and priced.
it might help amazonbasics, but it hurts everything else;
I am generally okay paying extra for the convenience of amazon, so I think I'm their target customer? but I have been burned a few times by fake products sold as the real thing. I mean, not so often that it's still less convenient, for me, at least, (and I'm usually able to return the thing) but it does vastly diminish the power of an 'everything store' if sometimes I buy a brand name thing and get a knock-off instead.
The whole point here is that you are paying extra for convenience. If I wanted to deal with sometimes getting the knock off version, I'd use ebay or aliexpress or whatever and save a few bucks.
Twice I've got 12 mouse traps from Amazon. Each time it's been a different vendor (not Amazon.) Literally 20 minutes ago I just checked the mailbox, and there was a padded envelope in it - my latest (third) order of mouse traps, from a third vendor. Inside the envelope? ONE mouse trap.
Sorry, anecdote and vent. But yes, we need verified vendors that actually ship you what you order.
(I'll be a good boy and pick up mouse traps from Home Depot. I've learned my lesson the hard way.)
Former Amazon seller - A quantity issue like that is most likely from a listing page being changed at some point. Certain sellers somehow earn the ability to change product details, and Amazon doesn't bother to inform everyone else that sells that product. So, that listing for a dozen mouse traps could've originally been for a single one, or vice versa.
What compounds this is that complaining about other sellers misdeeds typically goes nowhere. The only way to avoid such things on the seller side is to have your own brand in the brand registry so you have complete control over product details.
Well the first order was at my old house. The next was last winter when we got the fall/winter influx. That repeated, even worse, this fall. The Victor Snap traps work great. But we need a bunch of them (and we'll probably need to find entry points and try to reduce that if we can.)
I don't care whether Amazon does QA; Consumer Reports is good at that. I care about fraud, does Amazon know their wholesalers or can some scammer ship crap to the warehouse with someone else's brand on it?
This feels like grounds for a class action lawsuit. Amazon is clearly turning a blind eye and in many cases this is favoring Chinese knock-offs over American brands—-politically Amazon is on shaker ground.
At some point I feel like I'm being astroturfed.
People are amazed Amazon sells pasta and batteries under their own brand? Sounds like Ikea to me.
Amazon has several problems they haven't corrected in years - generally not great prices, fake products being co-mingled with genuine items, fake reviews, flaky or slow shipping (esp. with their own delivery people). I've even had a few brand new books arrive with binding or cover damage. Ugh.