I definitely agree with your point, but I think there's a small distinction to be made that I see. In my experience, Kirkland Signature products have generally been rebrands or slightly modified versions of quality products by trustworthy brands that cost more in their OEM packaging. This is perhaps true with many Amazon Basics items, but it doesn't seem as consistent as it does with Kirkland Signature's lineup. I would feel comfortable buying a KS product and assuming it is of good quality, even without Costco's notably flexible return and refund policy as a backup.

I wonder if that’s as much to do with the nature of the products as the corporate strategy. A large proportion of Kirkland products are foods, while that makes up a tiny proportion of Amazon products.

I have far more trust in Kirkland Signature products, and Costco in general, than Amazon Basics. Costco has a long history of treating customers and it’s employees well, and they seem less shady to me.

> You could text replace Kirkland Signature with Amazon Basics in this article and it's the same story.

Not realy. AmazonBasics has not been of good quality in my experiences. For example I have a travel case for cords and stuff I got less than a year ago that's fraying. Several other things have started to degrade rather quickly.

I would slightly adjust my statement to say “amazon basics and amazon recommends” which are typically presented right next to each other but aren’t quite the same thing.

Amazon recommends is definitely not highly trustworthy. Hard to quantify, but too often those products have bad FakeSpot ratings. I'm also surprised at how many Amazon Basics product seem to have signs of review manipulation.

Supermarkets have had No Frills brands forever but tended to be inferior (bottom of barrel beer, cling wrap that doesn’t cling, salt that clumps). Kirkland departs from that.

What is a little surprising is thd success despite the uninspiring design (unlike While Foods which prettifies it’s own line with modern color schemes, design and logos).

Well, that harkens back to when generic brands were big in the 1970s, they were intentionally extremely plain to get across the point that it's no-frills.

http://historysdumpster.blogspot.com/2012/08/generic-product...

"The idea behind them was by eliminating the cost for logos, descriptive copy, and photos/illustrations on the packaging, the savings could be passed on to consumers. Even though much of these were stock images anyway and in reality bore little extra cost in the actual manufacturing process."

I think it's the same psychology at work.

“despite the uninspiring design”

It just shows that all the focus on design is not needed if you produce quality products over a long time. Once you have a reputation there is no need for constant “modern” redesign. Just keep the quality up.

It’s nowhere near as simple as that. Store brand products have one special, massive advantage over non-store products. They don’t need to fight for shelf space - they are guaranteed it. As a result they don’t need to market heavily because they will automatically get the exposure they need. Try doing that with a non-store brand. Chances are you will go bust before you get the opportunity to build a reutation for quality.

The other issue here is that an overtly ‘basic’ brand name and trade dress is a form of marketing. Some people will go out of their way to seek out such products, for them its useful product differentiation and in fact it works exactly the same way as brand differentiation. It’s not actually any cheaper either, it isn’t any less expensive to print a generic label as a fancy one. The guveaway is packaging quality, it’s usualy comparable on store brand goods because in reality people aren’t looking to trade off quality for price. They’re trying to get quality products cheaper. It’s all just signaling.

Amazon Basics aren't really quality, they are like the Great Value walmart brand of the online marketplace.

Amazon seems to be more interested in creating more "sleeper" brands than adding products to AmazonBasics. All these are Amazon private label: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=17602470011

I mean one difference is that at Costco you sometimes only have Kirkland products in a certain category, while on Amazon the Basics line might be among the cheapest but there will always be competitors or other options to choose from.

I had a conversation with Amazon manager two days ago, exactly about AmazonBasics and how unfair it is to competitor vendors.

And his answers was "Our vision is that lower price is good for customer".

To be honest, I don't buy it.

Perceived lower prices is good for Amazon.com.

If customers think amazon.com has great value, they will buy more at amazon.com without thinking which allows them to sell their marketplace to vendors because if you're selling something you want to be where the buyers are.

If Amazon.com can convert those merchants to use Amazon.com ware houses and prime shipping, it can help create a self-sustaining ecosystem (sorry I hate this word as well but I can't think of a better one).

I lost faith in Amazon when I heard a presentation about building an automated price matching (increasing) system to "prevent leaving money on the table" by charging lower prices than competitors when Amazon already had the top search result.

>> Perceived lower prices is good for Amazon.com.

Exactly. For Amazon.