Amazon Personalize: Real-Time Recommendation

Re:Amazon Personalize: Real-Time Recommendation by ignoramous on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @07:35AM (#19262824)

What might happen is AWS might reveal "insights" or KPIs that might help its parent company Amazon, though I think it is highly unlikely since Amazon and AWS are in different businesses (as of now at least... as they converge around AI for Alexa/Robotics/Logistics, things might get interesting). It happened to 3p sellers on Amazon whose sales performance were indicators for Amazon to start AmazonBasics and other private-label offerings specifically targeted toward regions, market segments, and products with none of the downsides (survey the market, popularity index, demand forecasting, demographics) and all of the upsides (like getting preferential treatment in search result, upselling via various Amazon channels, homepage placement etc).

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Re:Amazon Personalize: Real-Time Recommendation by stef25 on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @08:14AM (#19262995)

Haven't supermarkets been doing this for ages? For example noticing that more people are buying gluten free pasta that costs 3x the price of normal pasta and then deciding putting out their own brand GF pasta that's just 2x the price.

With a bit of effort anyone can find products on Amazon that sell well (there's services that will do this) and then try to compete with those products. Amazon undoubtedly has more insights than those services provide, but that's probably not what makes or breaks their Basics products.

Their strength is probably their manufacturing costs being much lower than the average 3p startup seller and the brand itself.

I don't know why by I love these Basics lines that are being produced by Amazon, Zalando etc. They're positioned perfectly between "brands that are overpriced" and "Chinese brands selling probably crap products with probably fake reviews". I have Amazon basics towels, camera tripod, water filter, toiletry bag and more.

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Re:Amazon Personalize: Real-Time Recommendation by dragonwriter on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @08:35AM (#19263105)

> With a bit of effort anyone can find products on Amazon that sell well (there's services that will do this) and then try to compete with those products. Amazon undoubtedly has more insights than those services provide, but that's

The fact that they can make sure it makes is prominent in any search result in the category, even for a competing product, is what makes it, combined with the fact that it's the one thing on Amazon you can be 100% sure isn't counterfeit, size no one else can sell it so there is no risk of commingling. It's nice that Amazon has found a way to trade on the unreliability of their own marketplace, and to leverage dominant market power in online into marketshare in any particular product market they choose.

Great for Amazon, that is; not so sure it's good for anyone else.

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Re:Amazon Personalize: Real-Time Recommendation by hopler on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @10:21AM (#19263739)

Worse, by monitoring transactions, they know exactly how shitty (er, "Basic") a product can be before returns outweigh sales, without paying the cost of experimentation with their own manufacturing.

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