4 ms·
>, I keep advocating a simple principle: never use e-commerce sites for product discovery and evaluation. That strategy works better for some products. E.g. e
by jasode 6y ago
>, I keep advocating a simple principle: never use e-commerce sites for product discovery and evaluation.
That strategy works better for some products. E.g. especially high-value products such as digital cameras where one can go to photography discussion communities to learn of real-world opinions on Canon vs Nikon vs Sony, etc before visiting amazon.com
However, for many other products, that doesn't work. E.g. I was searching for a small square pictures frames and large photo albums for some family pictures. None of the online communities[1] talking about picture frames are useful for this because they focus on custom frames instead of commodity items. In this case, just browsing amazon.com's "virtual shelves" or driving to a brick&morter store to see what they actually stock is the easiest way.
Another example of using amazon.com's reviews (even if they're gamed) was buying a temporary guest bed. (My previous comment.[2]) As far as I can tell, there really isn't focal point of online discussion for folding beds because no strong recognizable brand names emerge to converge lots of opinions on. Because folding beds don't attract discussions like Canon/Nikon cameras, it turns out most of the opinions are at Amazon.
[1] one example search of discussion forums: https://www.google.com/search?q=picture+frames+discussion+forum https://www.google.com/search?q=picture+frames+discussion+fo...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24197305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24197305
- TeMPOraL 6y agoFair enough. What I do for the product categories you mention - cheap commodity items - is I first decide how important are they for me. If I don't really care about quality (or it's a product that's almost impossible to make in bad quality), I'll order from the cheapest seller that doesn't seem fly-by-night (which I determine by metrics like "how old is the account/offer", "how many positive reviews the offer page has" and "what special site-specific markings the seller has". It's not bullet-proof, but the goal here is just to avoid dealing with fraudsters. If I do care about quality, it depends on whether or not I can afford losing money and time on a bad item. If yes, GOTO previous paragraph. If not, I'll find a brand - any brand - that sells the item and order from them. Also not mentioned: for a good chunk of such purchases I rely on word-of-mouth. If someone I know has a product in the category I'm interested in and they're happy with their purchase, I'll just buy the same thing they did, preferably from the same place they did. The main heuristic I use: sellers are incentivized to lie, cheat and steal from you. Degree to which it happens depends, in general, on how much they can get away with. So I expect the official Nikon store to lie to me (deceptive marketing, bullshit specs, purposefully making it hard to compare across product category). I expect an e-commerce platform seller to lie and possibly cheat (that's entirely based on personal experience). Reviews are too easy to fake and bribe (I've personally know people who did it and I've been asked to participate many times, so I know how this works and how widespread it is).
- letitbeirie 6y agoConsumer Reports has a lot of good advice on smaller items like picture frames, but it doesn't come free (which is a good thing tbh).