I'm having trouble understanding how this differs from traditional ads - even pre-Internet...? Didn't manufacturers pay to get premium shelf space in a store?
I'm having trouble understanding how this differs from traditional ads - even pre-Internet...? Didn't manufacturers pay to get premium shelf space in a store?
In the author’s specific case of books, publishers always paid ‘coop marketing’ dollars to booksellers to get ‘face out’ placement on shelves, ‘end cap’ positioning where copies of the book would be positioned on the aisle-facing shelves used to entice people into browsing a section of the store, as well as more for table placements and window features. And that’s on top of just having to discount the price deep enough to get the seller to buy in stock of the book in the first place, as well as further eating margin reductions to induce sellers to offer discounts.
All these same incentives are at work in supermarket aisles and big box stores, shaping which products you see and are offered at what price. You think if you walk into Best Buy and ask them to show you laptops, the one they push you to look at is going to be the ‘best’ on offer? Or is it perhaps the one which is set up with the best sales staff commission this month?
Distribution channels have never been neutral champions of the consumer.
There's a difference between shelves in A Store and shelves in The Store.
Amazon can - and does - do whatever it wants with no consequences.
If the algo has a bad day your trader account can be terminated. You'll have to battle through layers of time wasting bots to get anywhere near a human who can do something about it.
Amazon can decide to change your product pricing or offer special deals without asking you. You can opt out, but if you're in, you get no say in what happens.
Only Amazon knows how many affiliate links lead to actual sales, how many ebook pages are actually read, what the CTR on ads really is, and so on.
> There's a difference between shelves in A Store and shelves in The Store.
> Amazon can - and does - do whatever it wants with no consequences.
20+ years ago the exact same accusations were leveled against Walmart.
I still don't see the difference.
> If the algo has a bad day your trader account can be terminated. You'll have to battle through layers of time wasting bots to get anywhere near a human who can do something about it.
Amazon is giving many people a platform they had no other hope of having. Years ago, for a while, I got deep into Amazon selling. An average Joe who is a full time employee can quickly set up a business, get some manufacturing contracts in China, and start selling on Amazon.
In the old days, that Joe would never be allowed on Walmart's shelves.[1] So it's equally true with Walmart: That average Joe would not be able to get a human to help him, because the humans would exclude him to begin with. Amazon is giving the average Joe more opportunity than they ever had. We're merely criticizing them for not giving those kinds of sellers great service.
Even for those who could get into Walmart - they made capricious decisions all the time that would impact your sales. If you were a small seller, you had no power over Walmart.
> Amazon can decide to change your product pricing or offer special deals without asking you. You can opt out, but if you're in, you get no say in what happens.
If the goal of your comment is to list all the reasons Amazon sucks - there's no need. I could write that list for you - I try not to buy from Amazon myself. The submission is specifically about their ads, as was my comment.
[1] Arguably, that's a good thing, and Amazon's lack of curation is one of the reasons I don't shop at Amazon, but it is besides the point here.