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.
