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This was actually a fairly interesting article, except for the strange tone - amazon isn't hiding that these are their brands, they seem to be flagged as "our b

This was actually a fairly interesting article, except for the strange tone - amazon isn't hiding that these are their brands, they seem to be flagged as "our brand" all over the place. so what's with the mspaint red circles pointing out incredibly obvious associations? Is this supposed to be satire, or does the author really believe they've discovered some sort of conspiracy here?

drharby 8y ago
Its popular to paint amzn as a boogyman
onetimemanytime 8y ago
The idea is that over time AMZN will push their products even more, to the point of hurting consumers and other sellers. Don't see the (potential--at least) bias? Amazon instead of showing you the best product, will show you the most profitable-to-them product. Yeah, same category and good enough but still, it stinks...
- nordsieck 8y ago
  > The idea is that over time AMZN will push their products even more, to the point of hurting consumers Do you think that supermarkets selling house brands hurts consumers?
  - physcab 8y ago
    No single supermarket controls 49% of all product related searches on the internet
    - briandear 8y ago
      If I search for Coca Cola and Amazon shows me "Amazon-Cola" and I ultimately scroll down and see Coca Cola -- no big deal. If Amazon decides to not sell Coca Cola at all, I'm still not buying "Amazon Cola." If you're shopping for name brands already, there really isn't much discovery necessary. If you aren't, then the competing brands should do something to differentiate themselves -- lower prices, higher quality, better advertising perhaps. If I'm buying a generic product to begin with, I don't particularly care what "store brand" it happens to be. And, if we want to talk manufacturing -- the "brands" are all that could be "hurt" -- the actual manufacturing of the product still happens, regardless of who sticks their label on it. A wheat farmer doesn't particularly care what brand the distributor sticks on the final package. He's still getting paid the prevailing price of wheat.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    >>Do you think that supermarkets selling house brands hurts consumers? Don't dismiss it. If a $10 store brand shirt lasts you 5 washes, then you were hurt by not buying a $20 brand one that lasts you years. (granted that you may not have $20 at the same time you need a T-shirt) Same for food items: store brands might be xx cents cheaper but lesser taste, quality and nutrition might put you in red.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  The thing is - everybody already knows this. Jeff Bezos has been open about this being the plan since the IPO in 1997, and that's why investors continued to give him money despite Amazon barely turning a profit for 15 years. Most customers knew this too - folks I know are like "Yeah, I know that once he gets a monopoly he's just going to raise prices and we'll be the ones hurting, but in the meantime I'm going to enjoy my low prices, free delivery, and convenient one-click ordering." Tragedy of the commons is a remarkably powerful business model. Everyone knows that collectively they're going to be fucked over by Bezos in a generation or so, but since everybody knows it, they're powerless to avoid it, because individually each person is just screwing themselves over by not buying from Amazon.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    Amazon might have a monopoly over amazon, but they don't have a monopoly over internet.
  - dingaling 8y ago
    > individually each person is just screwing themselves over by not buying from Amazon How so? I haven't noticed Amazon UK being particularly competitive on price for many years. I just randomly checked a camera backpack, £219 on Amazon and Wex both with free delivery. Canon 6D2, £40 cheaper than Amazon on Wex and Currys. Amazon are like Ryanair these days, coasting on a low-price reputation that is long gone. They each do occasional headline sales of things people don't want for pennies but the overall trend is up.
  - smileypete 8y ago
    Sorry to say, but I really doubt that more than a small proportion of Amazon customers really think any further than what they want. Something I've noticed is that many of the Amazon deals in the UK are really just price matches to other retailers, they know they can still likely make a profit due to their favourable tax arrangements.
- freeone3000 8y ago
  This bias is up-front and generally accepted in retail. Obviously they're selling at a bias. Heaven forbid a store sells its own products. What if Nintendo starts selling their most profitable products on their store? Or Whole Foods starts stocking expensive food products? Or the Rolex store in the mall promotes their most expensive watches, when the $5 timex keeps time better? When will the madness end?
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
As the article points out, the practice is nothing new, it's about the scale that Amazon does it at. And that's basically the point for everything Amazon does. They aren't doing anything other companies don't, it's just they do it on a massive scale. With "store brand" specifically, the idea is that Equate or other store brands were well known to be comparable, if slightly less good versions of name brands. In economics terms they were "substitute goods" from brand names, but depending on quality they may not be "perfect substitutes." In the case of Amazon, if they have brands that are at first glance not Amazon brands, but actually are amazon brands, then they are kind of doing an end run around what was an implicit agreement between consumers and retailers. Namely that a retailer will make it explicitly clear, with obvious branding, what is a "store brand" and what is not. Simply stating "our brands" isn't obvious enough to make that connection if you are only spending 30 seconds on a product description page. This is something that Amazon is great at actually.
- dixie_land 8y ago
  > Namely that a retailer will make it explicitly clear, with obvious branding, what is a "store brand" and what is not. how are brandings such as Kirkland Signature(Costco), Simple Truth(Kroger) or 365(Wholefoods) any more obvious than what Amazon is doing with "our brands"?
  - jld 8y ago
    The fact that those brands are used storewide make them more identifiable as store brands. You can buy simple truth milk, chicken, soup, and diapers at Kroger stores. Amazon has multiple distinct brands per category, which makes keeping track much harder.
    - jahewson 8y ago
      So it’s like cars, beer, candy bars, clothing stores, etc.
    - thenanyu 8y ago
      Kroger: https://www.kroger.com/b/ourbrands https://www.kroger.com/b/ourbrands Macys: https://www.macysinc.com/macys/private-brands/default.aspx https://www.macysinc.com/macys/private-brands/default.aspx Many of those brands are not obviously private label. Whole Foods and Costco are the exception in that they have only 1 store brand that everything is labeled under. This is probably because they are high-value brands unto themselves and it's advantageous to put their own stamp on it.
koboll 8y ago
>so what's with the mspaint red circles pointing out incredibly obvious associations? It's a playful allusion to viral conspiracy meme graphics. Designers at the NYT do not use non-antialiased lines and JPG artifacts unintentionally.
- Cenk 8y ago
  Yes, it’s pretty obviously a joke
greendestiny_re 8y ago
Red circles and arrows are a fairly reliable attention magnet. See how the pictures with circles and arrows are interspersed through the article? The idea is that the user is drawn to scroll further when they're about to give up. You can clearly see this tactic in action in Youtube thumbnails, for example: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=captain%20marvel%20trailer%20easter%20egg&aq=f&oq= https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=captain%20marve...

drharby 8y ago

Its popular to paint amzn as a boogyman

onetimemanytime 8y ago

The idea is that over time AMZN will push their products even more, to the point of hurting consumers and other sellers. Don't see the (potential--at least) bias? Amazon instead of showing you the best product, will show you the most profitable-to-them product. Yeah, same category and good enough but still, it stinks...

nordsieck 8y ago
> The idea is that over time AMZN will push their products even more, to the point of hurting consumers Do you think that supermarkets selling house brands hurts consumers?
- physcab 8y ago
  No single supermarket controls 49% of all product related searches on the internet
  - briandear 8y ago
    If I search for Coca Cola and Amazon shows me "Amazon-Cola" and I ultimately scroll down and see Coca Cola -- no big deal. If Amazon decides to not sell Coca Cola at all, I'm still not buying "Amazon Cola." If you're shopping for name brands already, there really isn't much discovery necessary. If you aren't, then the competing brands should do something to differentiate themselves -- lower prices, higher quality, better advertising perhaps. If I'm buying a generic product to begin with, I don't particularly care what "store brand" it happens to be. And, if we want to talk manufacturing -- the "brands" are all that could be "hurt" -- the actual manufacturing of the product still happens, regardless of who sticks their label on it. A wheat farmer doesn't particularly care what brand the distributor sticks on the final package. He's still getting paid the prevailing price of wheat.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  >>Do you think that supermarkets selling house brands hurts consumers? Don't dismiss it. If a $10 store brand shirt lasts you 5 washes, then you were hurt by not buying a $20 brand one that lasts you years. (granted that you may not have $20 at the same time you need a T-shirt) Same for food items: store brands might be xx cents cheaper but lesser taste, quality and nutrition might put you in red.
nostrademons 8y ago
The thing is - everybody already knows this. Jeff Bezos has been open about this being the plan since the IPO in 1997, and that's why investors continued to give him money despite Amazon barely turning a profit for 15 years. Most customers knew this too - folks I know are like "Yeah, I know that once he gets a monopoly he's just going to raise prices and we'll be the ones hurting, but in the meantime I'm going to enjoy my low prices, free delivery, and convenient one-click ordering." Tragedy of the commons is a remarkably powerful business model. Everyone knows that collectively they're going to be fucked over by Bezos in a generation or so, but since everybody knows it, they're powerless to avoid it, because individually each person is just screwing themselves over by not buying from Amazon.
- wetpaws 8y ago
  Amazon might have a monopoly over amazon, but they don't have a monopoly over internet.
- dingaling 8y ago
  > individually each person is just screwing themselves over by not buying from Amazon How so? I haven't noticed Amazon UK being particularly competitive on price for many years. I just randomly checked a camera backpack, £219 on Amazon and Wex both with free delivery. Canon 6D2, £40 cheaper than Amazon on Wex and Currys. Amazon are like Ryanair these days, coasting on a low-price reputation that is long gone. They each do occasional headline sales of things people don't want for pennies but the overall trend is up.
- smileypete 8y ago
  Sorry to say, but I really doubt that more than a small proportion of Amazon customers really think any further than what they want. Something I've noticed is that many of the Amazon deals in the UK are really just price matches to other retailers, they know they can still likely make a profit due to their favourable tax arrangements.
freeone3000 8y ago
This bias is up-front and generally accepted in retail. Obviously they're selling at a bias. Heaven forbid a store sells its own products. What if Nintendo starts selling their most profitable products on their store? Or Whole Foods starts stocking expensive food products? Or the Rolex store in the mall promotes their most expensive watches, when the $5 timex keeps time better? When will the madness end?

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

As the article points out, the practice is nothing new, it's about the scale that Amazon does it at. And that's basically the point for everything Amazon does. They aren't doing anything other companies don't, it's just they do it on a massive scale. With "store brand" specifically, the idea is that Equate or other store brands were well known to be comparable, if slightly less good versions of name brands. In economics terms they were "substitute goods" from brand names, but depending on quality they may not be "perfect substitutes." In the case of Amazon, if they have brands that are at first glance not Amazon brands, but actually are amazon brands, then they are kind of doing an end run around what was an implicit agreement between consumers and retailers. Namely that a retailer will make it explicitly clear, with obvious branding, what is a "store brand" and what is not. Simply stating "our brands" isn't obvious enough to make that connection if you are only spending 30 seconds on a product description page. This is something that Amazon is great at actually.

dixie_land 8y ago
> Namely that a retailer will make it explicitly clear, with obvious branding, what is a "store brand" and what is not. how are brandings such as Kirkland Signature(Costco), Simple Truth(Kroger) or 365(Wholefoods) any more obvious than what Amazon is doing with "our brands"?
- jld 8y ago
  The fact that those brands are used storewide make them more identifiable as store brands. You can buy simple truth milk, chicken, soup, and diapers at Kroger stores. Amazon has multiple distinct brands per category, which makes keeping track much harder.
  - jahewson 8y ago
    So it’s like cars, beer, candy bars, clothing stores, etc.
  - thenanyu 8y ago
    Kroger: https://www.kroger.com/b/ourbrands https://www.kroger.com/b/ourbrands Macys: https://www.macysinc.com/macys/private-brands/default.aspx https://www.macysinc.com/macys/private-brands/default.aspx Many of those brands are not obviously private label. Whole Foods and Costco are the exception in that they have only 1 store brand that everything is labeled under. This is probably because they are high-value brands unto themselves and it's advantageous to put their own stamp on it.

koboll 8y ago

>so what's with the mspaint red circles pointing out incredibly obvious associations? It's a playful allusion to viral conspiracy meme graphics. Designers at the NYT do not use non-antialiased lines and JPG artifacts unintentionally.

Cenk 8y ago
Yes, it’s pretty obviously a joke

greendestiny_re 8y ago

Red circles and arrows are a fairly reliable attention magnet. See how the pictures with circles and arrows are interspersed through the article? The idea is that the user is drawn to scroll further when they're about to give up. You can clearly see this tactic in action in Youtube thumbnails, for example: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=captain%20marvel%20trailer%20easter%20egg&aq=f&oq= https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=captain%20marve...