Is the salesperson selling ads or selling goods? If she's selling goods, she can show me all the alternatives she wants!

If she's selling ads, she should not pretend to not hear me say KitchenAid unless KitchenAid pays her enough to "understand" KitchenAid.

Vendor specific sales incentives and brick and mortar retailers charging vendors to be more visible than competitors are sales of active and passive advertising respectively.

Retailers have income streams beyond what shoppers provide directly. They sell access to your attention like Google and Facebook.

It should be illegal for the salesperson to put the KitchenAid product behind a mixer from another manufacturer, just because the other manufacturer paid them to.

You need to actively scroll past the ads. They aren't after the organic results. They are at the top, you need to ignore them or click them. It comes in b/w you and the first result.

This is how stores are in the real world - suppliers pay for good shelf space and for things like endcap displays. Also, salespeople get a bonus for selling particular items.

True, but when you reach for Coke, you get a coke. If you reach for a Pepsi you get a Pepsi. They don't nest a Pepsi in a Coke wrapper or vice versa to keep you from buying your choice.

I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. When you get the ad, it’s labeled as an ad and you still get the organic result. “I feel lucky” doesn’t send you to the ad.

Yeah, a better comparison would be if you go to the store intending to buy Coke, but at the front of the soda aisle is a giant display with Pepsi on sale -- so you end up buying Pepsi. Which, come to think of it, happens to me all the time.

Ok a better representation would be I ask a clerk for a Coke but I get handed a Pepsi and I have to say, no, I asked for a Coke, not a Pepsi. But depending on how much Pepsi paid them I may get the Pepsi handed to me several times till I get the Coke (sometimes some trademarked brands are way down -maybe below the fold.)

At a lot of restaurants, I ask for a Coke and I'm told "Would Pepsi be OK?"

That's likely because restaurants have exclusivity deals with either supplier to get a discount - Coke gets you Coke, Sprite and Fanta, Pepsi gets you Mirinda, Pepsi and 7up. It's not the restaurant blocking you with fake advertising, but just stating that they simply don't have it.

Now if they were getting supplied by both, then asking the same, that would be a better analogy.

If they have both, in some places, you're likely to be asked "What kind of coke?" to which "Pepsi," is an acceptable answer.

That’s only due to a regionalism where ‘coke’ means fizzy drink, soda pop, etc. not because of sales incentives.

Right, which makes it a genericized trademark.

> It should be illegal for the salesperson to put the KitchenAid product behind a mixer from another manufacturer, just because the other manufacturer paid them to.

This seems insane to me. I can't believe how hungry for legislation people are. If I own a store I should be able to stock anything I want and arrange it however I want. Why should the US government get a say in that?