What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”?

Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by duxup on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @03:43PM (#20098529)

Those things remind me of when I'm at a home hardware store.

They'll have a sale on say multi bit screwdrivers on the end cap. It will look like a fancy screwdriver that is on sale with lots of features and bits.

Inevitably if I by these ... they suck and are actually expensive for the quality and often have "features" that get in the way (some sort of fancy grip, more bits).

If I go down the isle I'll find for far less a simple multi bit screwdriver that is both cheaper, and higher quality.

Accordingly I never trust these signs / actually avoid them as the same rule apply to cooking tools and so many other things.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by asr on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @04:50PM (#20099092)

Manufacturers often pay stores for space on the end cap. http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/retail/raleys.php

As far as I know, "Amazon's choice" is not an advertisement/suppliers can't bid to be Amazon's choice.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by ceejayoz on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @05:30PM (#20099461)

Not directly, but if it's based on things like purchase volume and reviews, it can certainly be gamed by paid actors.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by dredmorbius on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @07:02AM (#20103119)

Shelf-placement generally, via planograms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planogram

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by URSpider94 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @04:30PM (#20098922)

Note that Amazon says that Amazon's Choice products are "Amazon's Choice recommends highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately." so that would go against the idea that these products are junky or expensive.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by pergadad on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @04:44PM (#20099036)

That could work if Amazon started fixing reviews but for now most reviews are spam. All the China products have raving reviews.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by swamp40 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @06:19PM (#20099807)

Why don't they only let you review items that you have purchased using the same account? Too simple I guess.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by ardy42 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @11:34PM (#20101248)

> Why don't they only let you review items that you have purchased using the same account? Too simple I guess.

Doing that would help, but probably not as much as you'd think. A lot of the fake review scams have the reviewers purchase the products legitimately and then get reimbursed through Paypal.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by ceejayoz on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @09:38PM (#20100803)

They do highlight reviews from users who actually purchased the item. That's why there's a thriving business in free products in exchange for good reviews.

Giving away a few hundred or thousand items can lead to huge sales numbers.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by colejohnson66 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @08:27PM (#20100491)

The idea is that people may have bought it somewhere other than Amazon and to let them post a review. Amazon does distinguish between “verified purchase”s and not

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by Wowfunhappy on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @04:35PM (#20098961)

If Amazon is being honest.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by throwaway2048 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @04:08PM (#20098746)

Lots of people assume end caps are on sale, but they usually never are, its just stuff that the store wants to sell to you really badly, which usually means high margins (because of crap quality, or overpricing), or the brand is paying them for the privilege.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by Spooky23 on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @09:01PM (#20100650)

If you know the store you can usually tell. Low quality end caps don’t sell and end up as dumping grounds for stuff that needs to go.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by B-Con on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @04:22PM (#20098843)

Also stale inventory they want to move.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by hdpq on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @05:11PM (#20099289)

those end-cap spots are usually paid placements as well.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by cardiffspaceman on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @12:08AM (#20101400)

Back in the days of Windows 3.1 when people bought software in a store on floppies, end-cap positioning was discussed as if it were under the control or influence of the 'distributor' layer of the retail food chain, and therefore the developer (the company) would design the collateral for the end-cap and work with the distributor. The end-caps were not usually bargains but "important" such as newly available OS's.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by UncleEntity on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @03:52PM (#20098596)

IDK, I bought an Amazon Choice rice cooker and I'm pretty happy with it.

Would have usually gotten a cheap one and have it break sooner rather than later but this thing is going strong so far.

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Re:What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? by duxup on Tuesday June 04, 2019 @04:01PM (#20098687)

I don't doubt they could be reasonable products, but stuff like a rice cooker or say crock pot isn't usually a product that has a lot of breakage... well shouldn't.

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