In running PricePlow (https://www.priceplow.com), I can say that our products (vitamins / supplements / protein) are complete and total chaos on Amazon. They clearly don't care about this corner of the market and let the marketplace stores run wild.
Despite some of the monumental volume that some of these products have, their listings are nothing short of unorganized disaster. There are definitely places where Amazon could (and should) have better pricing, but is actively neglecting it - and so are the marketplace stores for various reasons.
But that said, over the past half dozen plus years of doing this, there's been a huge, distinct shift towards deeper trust in Amazon.
In some of our smaller PricePlow-driven sites, when in doubt with where to send traffic (like if a product is out of stock or the price is a tie), I used to send them to Bodybuilding. Now, that's no more - the demographic is still cautious, but far more friendly to buying on Amazon... mostly for the reasons stated here in this discussion.
A lot of the industry hasn't figured that out yet, so it's been an interesting transition.
End of the day, from what I've seen, Amazon is a mess and could be doing a lot better with certain segments, but still does well despite their worst efforts. They're heading towards unstoppable status.
In running PricePlow (https://www.priceplow.com), I can say that our products (vitamins / supplements / protein) are complete and total chaos on Amazon. They clearly don't care about this corner of the market and let the marketplace stores run wild.
Despite some of the monumental volume that some of these products have, their listings are nothing short of unorganized disaster. There are definitely places where Amazon could (and should) have better pricing, but is actively neglecting it - and so are the marketplace stores for various reasons.
But that said, over the past half dozen plus years of doing this, there's been a huge, distinct shift towards deeper trust in Amazon.
In some of our smaller PricePlow-driven sites, when in doubt with where to send traffic (like if a product is out of stock or the price is a tie), I used to send them to Bodybuilding. Now, that's no more - the demographic is still cautious, but far more friendly to buying on Amazon... mostly for the reasons stated here in this discussion.
A lot of the industry hasn't figured that out yet, so it's been an interesting transition.
End of the day, from what I've seen, Amazon is a mess and could be doing a lot better with certain segments, but still does well despite their worst efforts. They're heading towards unstoppable status.