"Amazon's Choice" certainly suggests editorial oversight, but only in the way that "Quality Inn" suggests quality. For anything that isn't an objective, measurable fact, companies are allowed to lie.
The difference is that Quality Inn represents itself as "quality". Amazon is advertising other products as being chosen by them. We know not to trust a company's claims about its product, but if you ask an employee about a product you expect an honest answer – not one based on a kickback, for example.
I worked for electronic stores in the 90s. Certain products gave more commission. We sold the products that paid more. I sold phones at some point.. Depending on the brand I might get an extra 5 dollars. Those are the phones that were sold more.
An employee isn't going to give you an objective honest answer or they would tell you walmart has it for cheaper.
I'm sorry, but that's BS. What brick and mortar store doesn't promote third party products in the exact same fashion?
Case in point, literally a brick and mortar store with "<store name>'s Choice" as the slogan, to market a brand created by a third party company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam%27s_Choice
Unethical behavior is still unethical if other people are doing it too. In the case of Amazon there isn't a physical evaluation of a product if it's "on and end cap" and promoted like a typical brick and mortar store. I've purchased the Amazon Choice item many times as I didn't have time to read reviews on a dozen similar products and assumed the one they recommended was well rated, reliable, the best choice. If it was properly labelled "Featured by Amazon," I'd have assumed something very different and inspected the product carefully.
In a physical store, I have ignored the end cap because the product was visibly a smaller volume than a competitor at a similar price. I can also go to the aisle section and directly compare all the options the store presents vs products filtered down and advertised to me by Amazon's algorithms. There is bias but more transparency like bottom shelf vs eye level. Amazon is a black hole unless you still trust their review system.
It’s very common for stores to advertise money losing items to get people into the store. In store they often promote their extremely low price on something to make a positive association with their customers and move more products.
Amazon’s approach is micro optimized to make money today at the cost of customer satisfaction, a long term losing strategy.
PS: It might just be my circle of friends, but many Amazon early adopters have mostly moved on. That opening the box and wondering how you where screwed this time feeling is a major issue for the company.
I don't see how Sam's Choice is deceptive. Private label product programs are created by retail organizations, often at the behest of the founders/top management (usually the same in family run retail organizations). This is how I imagine it went down:
-Sam Walton said "We should have a private label soda program. Loblaw in Canada has President's Choice."
-Category manager of Soda floats this to potential suppliers.
-Cott Beverage says "Hey, we'll do it. How 'bout we call it 'Sam's Choice'?"
-Category manager of Soda says "Great! I'll tell Sam." (or more likely, the VP of Grocery/Merchandising)
-Sam Walton says "Great Job! Sam's Choice, nice touch. That's my name!"
The way private label grocery works is very different. Private label CPG products are developed through partnerships between the retailer themselves, consultancies like Daymon Worldwide (now owned by Acosta), and producers (often called copackers in this instance). Depending on how commodified the product is (like canned corn or frozen vegetables), it might be simply a matter of white labeling and sourcing through reverse auctioning. Sometimes the retailer will work on the product development lifecycle to create unique offerings.
Generally speaking, these copackers do not pay the retailers to get into their store, because the retailer is paying them for these products, and the retailer is possibly sourcing at least the packaging if not the development on their own. Whereas Amazon acts as a platform, retailers actually purchase and take possession of the product that they have had some hand in creating. Essentially, PL (private label) products start much further back in the supply chain. By the time they reach store shelves (even by the time they reach the warehouse), the supplier has already made their profit. You would rarely if ever have a brand in a store that gets upgraded (or downgraded depending on the power of the retailer's brand) to private label due to sales considerations or lobbying on the copacker's part. If anything, the retailer might take on lesser known brands the copacker is trying to promote as part of their sales agreement, even though they could be the same exact product that is in the retailer's branded packaging.
Speaking to Sam's Choice specifically, as it relates to Amazon's Choice:
- Sam's Choice is only tied implicitly to its retailer (at least as far as Walmart is concerned, at Sam's Club I'm sure the connection is far clearer). You need knowledge about the organization (or to read the packaging) to understand that this is a private label product. Amazon's Choice is much more explicit.
- Amazon's Choice is a designation more than a brand. As far as I know, the products retain their own branding and identity. Most customers understand that private label products are not manufactured by the retailers themselves, but if you want to find out that Sams' Choice (and much of the private label soda and soda adjacent products category in the majority of food retail) is actually manufactured by Cott Beverage, you need to do some research.
- The idea that Sam's Choice was "created" by Cott is kind of strange, though I can't dispute it directly. PL brands like Sam's Choice (and Great Value, Walmart's other PL brand) are owned by the retailer and usually entail working across multiple categories, which means working with multiple suppliers. It's possible that "Sam's Choice" the brand was created early enough during the evolution of the PL ecosystem that Cott coined the name of the brand (even though its almost a complete copy of President's Choice, the PL brand of the Canadian supermarket chain Loblaw), but to consider a PL product a "third party" product is very strange to me. Cott doesn't have any claim to Sam's Choice products that are produced in non-beverage categories.
Store employees might also have been incentivized to suggest a specific product based on kickbacks the store receives. There is a precedent there. You shouldn't expect unenforceable honesty from anyone.
I have been completely incorrect on my interpretation of Amazon's Choice.
Historically when I searched for something, I've often find a product in the results with 80-90% of the features I'm looking for. That result was often listed as Amazon's Choice, so I built it up in my mind to mean "users of Amazon mostly get this one" I was fine with that because, like I said, it usually wouldn't fit the criteria exactly, but it was 80-90% of the way there so it made sense to me that it would be the choice of most people, but not all.
Even more pedantically, lying is all about intent to deceive. A correct statement is still a lie if you think it’s wrong. The key question here is: does Amazon intend to deceive? It’s probably impossible to know but the odds are decently good.
The more comparable products are Sam’s “President’s Choice” and Costco’s Kirkland. Both of which have long developed brand promises that represent at least above average quality and some level of curation. Choice is a specific word chosen by Amazon to give the impression its products have similarly been curated. It’s deliberate subterfuge.
I agree with other users. I took it as an official designation that Amazon had vetted the product and/or vendor for consistency, and that returns/reviews/volume of purchase were all factors in a genuine recommendation for the product.
I'm a tech savvy 30-something cynic, too. Think about how it would fool others.
If the name of the product or brand line was "Amazon's Choice" then I would consider it branding. But when used as a designation, I expect more.
Yes, I remember my local supermarket had 'recommended' products that were marked like they were specials, but were not actually discounted at all. I appreciated the business logic, but basically stopped shopping there.
Depends on what you mean by "allowed". Is it legal? Yes. Will customers retaliate when they find out -- or at least, learn to ignore that lie as just another marketing tactic with no value? More than likely.
Again, though, the practice is pervasive. Are the "best value!" items you see at the ends of grocery aisles really the best value? How often are things "on sale" from prices for which they were never offered?
I mean, I guess it's OK to be outraged about this. But doing it specifically about Amazon seems maybe a little unobjective.
I find marketing in general outrageous. I'm not surprised by or find Amazon particularly egregious in their marketing. This is apparently the system we want, at least until no one wants it anymore.
I will almost subconsciously assign a negative mark to companies who aggressively market, and a positive mark to those I deem authentic (spoiler, very few). I'm at the point now that I'm saving a ton of money because I'm simply turned off by the hard sell. It's like when you immediately close a tab on an article you were about to read because 4 different "Join our newsletter" modals slid in. I'm guessing I'm not the only one (but maybe one of few?). Is it possible that marketing practices have gotten so out of hand that they are very gradually nudging consumers away from what they're selling?
Anyone know if marketers talk about this sort of backlash at w/e conventions they have, or is it just push push push. The data must identify at least a hint of a negative trend right? How long until there are "authenticity consultants"?
