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Amazon Puts Its Own 'Brands' First (themarkup.org) 79

Posted by msmash from the daylight-robbery dept.
Amazon gives a leg up to hundreds of house brand and exclusive products that most people don't know are connected to Amazon. From a report: It took Robert Gomez about five months to get his Kaffe coffee grinder to the big leagues in e-commerce: among the first three search results for "coffee grinder" on Amazon.com. Gomez, founder of Atlanta-based consumer goods startup 4Q Brands, said he obsessively refined his photos and description, amassed reviews from happy customers, and paid Amazon $40,000 a month on advertising to boost sales, one of the elements Amazon tells sellers will increase search ranking. Then Amazon introduced a competitor from house brand Amazon Basics and another from a brand that sells exclusively on Amazon, DR Mills. "They ranked well right away," Gomez said, each of them appearing among the top-three results for "coffee grinder" searches immediately. The reason, he said, was clear: "Their search ranking is high because they're an Amazon brand."

An investigation by The Markup found that Amazon places products from its house brands and products exclusive to the site ahead of those from competitors -- even competitors with higher customer ratings and more sales, judging from the volume of reviews. We found that knowing only whether a product was an Amazon brand or exclusive could predict in seven out of every 10 cases whether Amazon would place it first in search results. These listings are not visibly marked as "sponsored" and they are part of a grid that Amazon identifies as "search results" in the site's source code. (We only analyzed products in that grid, ignoring modules that are strictly for advertising.) When we analyzed star ratings and number of reviews, neither could predict much better than a coin toss which product Amazon placed first in search results. Amazon told Congress in 2019 that its search results do not take into account whether a product is an Amazon-owned brand. Sellers say it doesn't seem that way to them. Gomez said Amazon's brands have "unfair advantages" that make it harder for small merchants like him to compete on its open marketplace. "Who bears the cost are those entrepreneurs and small businesses that don't have the means to fight." From Wednesday: Amazon Copied Products and Rigged Search Results To Promote Its Own Brands, Documents Show.
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Amazon Puts Its Own 'Brands' First More

Amazon Puts Its Own 'Brands' First

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  • Target and Walmart put their house brands on premium eye level shelf height. Wow, this article is dumb.
    • The difference is that Amazon is an e-commerce marketplace open to everyone. Imagine if you paid Target $40,000 per month to carry your product in stores, and they put up a laminated cardstock image on the back of a shelf with a notice to "ask an employee to retrieve one for you from the warehouse" while all of the Target branded products are right there for you to grab and put in your cart.

      This is no different than Google recommending their own solutions over paid advertisers in Google searches. It's no
      • You've clearly never been to a Costco, all their house brands are at the end caps in the main walkways, if you want that Cottonelle or Charmin (or whatever brand they carry that month) toilet paper, walk 40 feet into the isle. This is no different.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by piojo ( 995934 )

          This is totally different. There's an expectation that search results will be ordered by relevance, popularity, quality, price, etc. When Amazon ranks their products first, it implies they are superior to others by some metric.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            There's an expectation

            No there isn't. If you think otherwise, you're just being dumb.

          • "When Amazon ranks their products first, it implies they are superior to others by some metric."

            It implies that to you. To me, it implies they want to move that product over others for SOME reason. ...and they are superior, in profit margin!

          • Well, it actually is superior -- for Amazon. They get a higher margin on their in-house product.

          • What expectation was provided in a legal agreement? I mean, the example of a coffee grinders is a joke. There's a million coffee grinders. If you really into coffee (like me) you wouldnt even consider a cheap house brand one anyways.

            • What expectation was provided in a legal agreement? I mean, the example of a coffee grinders is a joke. There's a million coffee grinders. If you really into coffee (like me) you wouldnt even consider a cheap house brand one anyways.

              There are more than three high end coffee grinders on the market today. Some of those brands have been around for decades to establish themselves. Breaking into that limited crowd on one of the planets largest online e-merchants? I'd say there's an expectation that $40K of marketing, is worth the cost.

              • You joking right, the article used an example of 4Q grinders, which looks to be junk: https://www.tomoson.com/b/4Q-B... [tomoson.com] this is not high end nor expensive. No wonder Amazon just made another piece of junk grinder for a few bucks less. Dont make junk commodities, house brands wont copy you.

                • You joking right, the article used an example of 4Q grinders, which looks to be junk: https://www.tomoson.com/b/4Q-B... [tomoson.com] this is not high end nor expensive. No wonder Amazon just made another piece of junk grinder for a few bucks less. Dont make junk commodities, house brands wont copy you.

                  There is another laughable aspect to this. People who take grinding beans that seriously, aren't buying Amazon Brand anything, so it becomes quite irrelevant. I'm not even sure why someone would pay them $40K for marketing, but obviously someone felt that was worth it.

          • This is totally different. There's an expectation that search results will be ordered by relevance, popularity, quality, price, etc. When Amazon ranks their products first, it implies they are superior to others by some metric.

            If you have that expectation, you're an idiot. Hope that wasn't too blunt.

        • Amazon is a dominating market leader in online purchases, Costco is not a dominating leader in sales of products, its own or others. These rules are not about "don't promote your products ahead of others", but instead they are "do not abuse your near monopoly position to engage in unfair competition". Once a company achieves a significant level of market dominance in one area then additional scrutiny is applied (irestrictions on mergers is probably the most common). Amazon's crappy products should be ma

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • You've clearly never been to a Costco as well or understand their paradigm of a shopping experience. The warehouse design is built like a maze, no signs. They want you to wonder where the hell things are. The end caps near the main walkway encourage you to pick their house brands because its a dam warehouse with pallets of crap. Once you see their house brand of toilet paper (or anything they make) you pick it up and dont enter the aisle. There are literally millions of documentaries on the Costco mode

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fermion ( 181285 )
        This is in fact what happens. People pay target to carry product, but it is the vendors responsibility to create demand. Amazon is a place you buy stuff. Presumably you have more choice than target, and therefore the best will prevail. If Amazon can create better products and force others to do so in return that is a win for consumers. If we were protectionist and did allow competition, we in the US would still be stuck with overpriced cars that lasted a year.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        You are literally describing the operational model at Target, Walmart, and any major B&M retailer, as if it is fictional.

        Walmart doesn't carry products for free. Brands pay to have their products on the shelf. And they pay more for premium shelf space.

        Unless you're Walmarts house brand, in which case you get it for free.

      • You've described almost exactly how brick and mortar retail works. Kellogg's pays (better wholesale pricing) the grocery store to put their sugar cereals at kid level. Unfortunately they don't put up a placard for any other brand, you just can't get it. At least at Amazon you can actually get off brands of things. The article is like calling the fire department because your neighbor grilled out in the back yard.
        • Exactly, at least on Amazon you have a shot for eyeballs as a smaller company making goods. Good luck getting shelf space with Walmart and Target. Even worse odds with Costco and their offering strategy. If a house brands copies you, its not the house brand that is at fault, its your business model making cheap commodities easily copied that's the issue. If someone copies you as a house brand that beat you on price, maybe not value/performance, the consumer still wins.
    • While I don't agree with what Amazon is doing. I don't have sympathy for these sellers who are not manufacturing or even designing any of their own products anyway. They are going to a factory in China, selecting a product they want to slap their logo and colors on and maybe some slight non-functional design changes to make it look like their own and then paying massive amounts of money to promote something cheap you can literally get from 100s of sources.

    • Walmart doesn't do that much anymore...don't know about Target

    • Wow, you can't tell the difference between someone using a 22 caliber gun and using a nuclear bomb.

      Scale matters.

      • Oh really? Head to walmart.com now, type in :dishwasher detergent" and their house brand shows up right next to cascade in the first line of results field. Cascade pays for the banner after the search so that doesnt count.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )

      Yes but you see, they are not FAANG companies.

      Let me remind you of the rules. One rule is, whenever a FAANG company takes a practice that has been going on for 100 years, and does it in the digital world, that practice is now a lot more evil and therefore deserves a ton of media coverage and press.

      It doesn't matter that Walmart is larger than Amazon by any measure that can be concocted - the fact that Amazon is doing it makes it evil.

    • Wow, Amazon is a very dominant market leader in online sales, and as such is not allowed by US rules to unfairly use its dominance in one market to leverage products in a nother market. Thse are standard anti-trust rules; they apply to companies like Amazon, but don't apply to mom and pop stores. It's the basis for fair competition, which allows a free market to function properly.

  • Seriously, I couldn't find NO SHOP of any kind of product that do not put their own brand first.

    Could you show me any?

    • For the FTC what matters is if the competition is fair. Thus, using your market monopoly in making widgets you cannot leverage dominance to also sell doo-dads. Other doo-dad makers should not be impeded in their business because they can't compete in a widget market simultaneously.

      So, because Amazon is a near monopoly in online sales, various anti-trust rules come into play that do not apply to other retailers. For decades, posters on slashdot seem to not understand basic anti trust rules. ("if linux ca

      • I do not understand your "basic anti trust rules" example.

        Maybe because it fails in its core: the REAL problem with Microsoft web browser. As of today, you STILL CAN'T uninstall their web browser NOR replace it completely with any other.

        Example: You can install whatever web browser you want in Windows 10, you can force the web opening to that browser via config and even using the registry editor. Go to the desktop and press "F1" (help) and it will open a f*cking web page in Microsoft Edge.

        • And we sued Microsoft over this in the US, except that the Bush #2 admin withdrew the case. However the EU continued with their own case so that Microsoft had to allow a choice in the EU (but not in the US). The same rationale is there in this case, their virtual monopoly as an OS was hampering fair competition in the browser market, not because pre-installing a browser is unfair, but because a monopoly OS pre-installing a wannabe browser in an environment with an emerging browser market was unfair.

          The an

  • As far as I can tell, it's the same one as the "Canon" camera bag in every way. Same pockets, same zippers, same velcro partitions, same nylon straps and plastic buckles. Except it has an "Amazon" logo sewn on where there would otherwise be a "Canon" logo and it cost a hundred dollars less.

    The Canon branded bag was listed as being made in China. The Amazon bag was listed as being made in China. Since the only difference is the logo, I infer that both bags are made on the same line in the same Chinese sweats

  • Modern Bait & Switch (Score:4)

    by BoRegardless ( 721219 ) on Thursday October 14, 2021 @10:30AM (#61891365)

    Why would I buy an Amazon branded product? Uh, I don't.

    I simply believe it is totally unethical (though not illegal) for a site to offer great products delivered fast and then undercut them with a house brand.

    I want to support the companies and their founders who have the guts and stamina to "do it better" and bring out a new product.

    I don't buy off Amazon!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hoodfu ( 8865471 )
      Yeah but aren't the vast majority of products on Amazon just ones where no name Chinese fly by nights have done the same type of IP ripoff or flat out counterfeiting of goods? Other than Anker, I don't think I've bought the same product from the same company name twice on there. We all just assume that they have the same level of safety and non-toxicity that regulates the US, but there's no way to know.

    • I simply believe it is totally unethical (though not illegal) for a site to offer great products delivered fast and then undercut them with a house brand.

      I think it is very close to misuse of monopoly power, so might be illegal. It is not really the same as supermarkets promoting own brands. In my bit of Birmingham UK, there are two main supermarkets, so there is no monopoly. I buy own brand groceries, and I am quite happy with that. I don't think I am being deprived of choice.

      I am not sure if Amazon is a true monopoly, but it looks like one in practice. I can buy from elsewhere, but I can't think of any other shop where I can buy bathroom scales, a laptop c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        for openers, at Walmart's site/

        It's also consistently less expensive than amazon's--to the point that I dropped amazon prime.

    • As an Anerican blue-collar worker who does heavy industrial maintenance, I totally agree. Most if not all of our manufacturing has been offshored, in a move designed to destroy the middle class and labor. That is why I only buy all my tools used, buy my truck used etc etc. Everything is used, except for toilet paper and food. The effect of this is that, I am not encouraging the bastards, nor contributing to their ripoff "economy". And if enough people do that, like a nationwide strike -- we can shut their a

    • I saw this plugin recommended by some of my favorite anti-CCP YT channels. [wecultivate.us]

      Here's a 30 second video on how it works [youtu.be]

      I admit I haven't tried it yet, but the last time I looked they didn't have a FF version and they do now.

    • I simply believe it is totally unethical (though not illegal)

      Because you believe this, even when it becomes both unethical and immoral, most of the world's corruption is simply allowed to happen, and has gotten far worse in the last decade.

      I don't buy off Amazon!

      Congrats. You get an A for effort, and have made about as much of a difference as your belief system.

    • I went shopping for whetstones on Amazon. Years ago I bought a nice Japanese one, but I needed a lapping stone to flatten my old one down, and I was thinking I'd get a newer one.

      Everything there was a Chinese knockoff brand with a tonne of 1-star reviews talking about how the coarseness was mislabled or how it wasn't flat. I looked around for more than an hour trying to work out if anything was worth buying.

      I got some advice from a friend about a Canadian specialty shop that sells knives and whetstones, and

  • Adjacent /. story some consumers confused about when posters are paid to endorse a product [slashdot.org], this seems to me pretty much the same thing; it is dishonest by omission of saying "this is our product". However this sort of thing is widespread and will be very hard to stop.

  • Captain Renault is shocked, SHOCKED, to find that gambling has been going on at Rick's.

  • Just break them up into two companies, one that acts ONLY as a marketplace, the other as a store.

    Gets rid of 90% of the bad shit I hear about Amazon.

    It will even put more emphasis on them fixing their horribly corrupt star recommendation system. (4+ stars usually means some one has cheated the system)

    • Just break them up into two companies, one that acts ONLY as a marketplace, the other as a store.

      One of the problems I found with Amazon when they started selling stuff other than books and music was that this was not like buying stuff from a shop, where the shopkeeper provides some guarantee that the goods are fit for purpose. So it is a marketplace, and goods are sold as seen. I did end up rather unsatisfied with some bathroom scales, and bought another product from a known brand. None of this cost much money, so not worth complaining about. That is part of the problem. Some cheap tat brand got a sal

  • In my google stock watchlist, on which I have AMZN, it shows me relevant articles like these over the last 6 months. Every time something comes out with implied shadiness, the stock price creeps up. Lots of clutching of pearls as people are clicking the "buy stock" button. It's probably going to be a whole lot of "good for stock" until it very suddenly and massively isn't.
  • This is exactly what I said the other day [slashdot.org] and some twat nozzle said no, they weren't.
    • and you were wrong yesterday too. Pay to Play is most pronounced in the grocery store and actually Amazon is a better place for a no name product to get seen. https://cspinet.org/news/supermarkets-%E2%80%9Crigged%E2%80%9D-through-secret-deals-food-manufacturers-20160928
  • They do so much shady shit and politicians bend over so they can blow cherry scented smoke up their ass and swallow every lie they are told. Politicians really need a IQ check and a sticker on the chest.
  • I am actually a little surprised it matters. Amazon's search is really terrible,.. I've always had better luck going to google and searching 'amazon xyz' than using Amazon's own search system.

  • Amazon's been doing this forever.

    Hell, even if you put the -name brand- that you want, they can still rank their Amazon Basic products first. Case in point: A search for "Rayovac 9V battery" [amazon.com]. The Rayovac comes in at #3, behind Amazon Basics and Energizer.

    Welcome to the world of algorithms. Rage against the machine all you like, but you will never beat it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by afidel ( 530433 )

      Interesting, despite what TFA says this is what I get on your results:
      Amazon Basics "Featured from our brands"
      Energizer "Sponsored"
      So, not only do they have the right to move products around just like every other retailer on the planet, but they're actually transparent when they do so unlike say Walmart where you get zero explanation for why something is on and endcap, at eye level for the intended buyer, etc.

  • It's a shame Gomez probably can't afford to rent a pack of carnivorous lawyers to wring damages out of Amazon for taking advertising money under false pretenses. Amazon has always claimed it doesn't behave like this, so proving it has would go a long way toward proving fraud, I would think.

  • Shocked to find Gambling in this establishment!

  • I'm not really opposed to Amazon putting its own brands first (store brands are so insanely common in retail that they'd be crazy if they didn't have their own stuff), but knowing which ones are Amazon-created brands (AmazonBasics is obvious, but they have many less obvious ones like Presto!), Amazon acquisitions, some new up-and-comer, Chinese knock-off, Amazon-exclusive seller, etc is near impossible, and probably intentionally so.

    It's not like it would be incredibly difficult to open that information up

  • Don't buy any consumer item that they make. Spread the word!

    • So you won't buy the "Amazon Basics" coffee grinder. Instead you'll buy the "DR Mills" coffee grinder, which also happens to be an Amazon brand, they just don't make it as easy to tell. They already anticipated you.

    • Been boycotting them since 2016. I haven't noticed my life becoming any more deprived. I buy books from a book shop (or their website) groceries from a supermarket, car parts from the car parts store etc. And if for some reason I really want to buy some unreliable electronic crap I can still go to aliexpress :-)

      • Me too. I try to not buy from them. One challenge is for books: I use Kindle and it is very reliable. I used the Nook app for about a year, and it was always crashing and having issues. Finally I gave up and went back to Kindle. But for other things, I order from places other than Amazon.

  • Literally every store out there with house brands promotes them as premium, select, or exclusive without saying, "This is our house-band generic. It's not special." They use sales data to predict segment growth or simply to promote their own items more.

    At least with Amazon Basics, Amazon puts their own name on it and I'm reasonably confident that the products will be decent.

  • I mean, I always assumed this to be true, instinctively. Also, some positions are "featured", which I presume means that the seller pays to get advantaged placement. Is this not true of most online retail? I always assumed that every retailer pushed their brand over the others that they sell as a matter of course.

    • No surprise there - for as long as I can remember supermarkets have put the most profitable brands at or just below eye-level, while the ones with lower margins are located in less prominent locations. Sometimes the best margin is an own-brand item, other times they'll strike a deal with a manufacturer and something will suddenly jump into a prime spot at the end of an aisle, or right on eye-level.

      Amazon is trying to do the same, but in doing so they've made their search results pretty much unusable. To the

  • Yes, Amazon puts its own brands first. Amazon *also* prioritizes ripping off your design with their own version. If you start doing well and build up a good following, Amazon will absolutely clone your material and bump you down the search so that your product doesn't receive attention.

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