> And what's stopping consumers from bypassing drop shippers altogether?

Situational awareness and a narrative of trust. The number of advertisements on facebook these days promoting some retail site where every single product can be found on aliexpress for less money _and_ free shipping is staggering. The only reason you would buy from them is 1) You don't know what's on aliexpress because you don't know about aliexpress, 2) You don't know what's on aliexpress because you don't trust rando chinese factory sellers without western-friendly spin.

I suppose, depending where you live, local laws may provide more assurances if something goes wrong with the order. Here in Australia at least you are not obligated to deal with anyone other than whoever took your money.

Though in my experience most AliExpress sellers are friendly and willing to refund or work through issues anyway. I've had fewer bad surprises on there than Amazon.

Not a big aliexpress shopper but last time I checked everything is being sold in volume. You don't buy one thing you have to buy many. I am wrong? If that is the case buying one radio instead of 25 makes more sense.

Alibaba is about volume. AliExpress does single quantities too. Except for really cheap things and then you can several items together but nothing you'd really call bulk.

Dropshippers (assuming the product they are shipping is decent quality) are providing a service to the manufacturer - customer acquisition. Sure, it's possible for a consumer to find the vendor on Ali Express or somewhere like that, but most don't want to. They just want to Google $THING and buy it from a website that they've heard of or looks like it specializes in $THING.

No customer buys a product from a drop shipper after a googling session. It's all sales by aggressive advertising on FB and Insta, peppered with false promises aiming at selling you a $3 plastic gizmo for $25.

They actually do.

The part you left out is highlighted:

> They just want to Google $THING and buy it from a website that they've heard of....

People google stuff (or search on Amazon), land on Amazon or some other online retailer, and buy it.

You might be surprised how much stuff is drop shipped via Amazon sales, and that can be direct shipment or to an Amazon warehouse then FBA.

And yes, paying $25 for a $3 rack rate good is close to standard. If you walk through a Target or Walmart, you will see tons of stuff that can be purchased on Alibaba for about that ratio.

It’s interesting seeing the same product on Amazon being sold by different vendors at widely ranging prices

You might think they are the same product, but Amazon is currently being overrun by counterfeit goods. It's no better than ebay or craigslist, at this point.

Also delivery timescales vary a lot. The worst are the ones claiming to ship from local warehouses and four weeks later you get an envelope from China. Basically they just con you on the wait period. But hey you can always go to a local shop and pay £20 for 16GB microSD card or USB cable.

90% of the job of a dropshipper is to market the product, make ads campaigns, SEO, and optimize their website(s) for conversion. There's almost nothing on dropshipping website you couldn't find on AliExpress, the value added is the sale itself.

It can't be automated because they are different manufacturers. There is already Aliexpress for that. What manufacturers need to do is setup a marketing operation in the US/EU to sell their product. They figured that it's more profitable to let these guys run these operations.