Re:Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Produ...
by aeturnum on Monday June 08, 2020 @10:09PM
(#23462940)
Yes, stores that push the products made by them over other alternatives are worse for the customer and harmful to the market.
I don't think there's anything wrong with stores recommending something in general. For instance, I don't think there's anything wrong with the "amazon's choice" label that Amazon uses.
This feels different to me, because as I said originally, this isn't Amazon recommending their brand. Amazon still ranks search results based on some combination of popularity and (probably) profitability.
To return to the in-store scenario: let's say you asked someone in Target to recommend crackers. The employee has a recommendation, but to hear it you first need to be shown the Target brand crackers, and then the employee will give you their recommendation.
Re:Amazon’s New Competitive Advantage: Putting Its Own Produ...
by paul_f on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @07:27AM
(#23465617)
Brands pay for placement. Promoting a store brand over another brand that paid for placement, not one that is necessarily better, is not a problem IMO. It is good business. You're gonna lose advertising dollars, but that's a business decision. To survive, some brands will need to find a way to cut out the middleman - Amazon
To extend it again to the grocery store example, if I walk into a Target and ask the customer service person for their recommendation for some crackers, and they walk over to the Cracker aisle and point directly at the Target brand crackers instead of the Nabisco ones, are you saying that's problematic?