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> Wal-Mart putting their own brand of toilet paper on more prominent end cap shelves is fundamentally different than Amazon promoting their own Amazon Basics to

> Wal-Mart putting their own brand of toilet paper on more prominent end cap shelves is fundamentally different than Amazon promoting their own Amazon Basics toilet paper on a search results page on Amazon.com. The other fundamental difference is scale. It can physically walk down the toilet paper aisle in Walmart in see all the available toilet papers in less than a minute. In fact, I can probably wander the entire Walmart store in about 30-45 minutes and see everything they are selling in that store. It is not entirely impractical. On the other hand it is impractical for me to go through all the items Amazon is selling. Thus what they are promoting becomes much more important.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
Are you suggesting that physically going to a Walmart and walking down the aisle to view all the toilet paper options is more "practical" than typing walmart.com, searching for toilet paper, and scrolling through the options? Personally, I find it much easier to search for products at home. It's literally seconds versus at least 10 to 15 minutes to get to the nearest store and browse around. And what is the use case for browsing all of the products in a store? I can't imagine why I would need to walk around an entire Walmart.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  > Are you suggesting that physically going to a Walmart and walking down the aisle to view all the toilet paper options is more "practical" than typing walmart.com, searching for toilet paper, and scrolling through the options? No. I am saying that once you are at Walmart, staring at the the end cap toilet paper, it is more practical to just walk down the aisle scanning the rest of the toilet paper available, than it it is to go through the many pages of results on either walmart.com or amazon.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I guess that's true, but I don't see the purpose of that comparison. Also, if the website is designed well, such as Home Depot, it's actually better to use the Home Depot website on your phone to find what you need, and it tells you exactly where it is in the aisle. It would take me longer to search through all the products in the aisle to find exactly what I need. Might not be the case for an item such as Toilet Paper, but websites that let me drill down into the attribute of the product I need are super useful.
    - stonogo 6y ago
      > I guess that's true, but I don't see the purpose of that comparison. There is more noise online, so signal-boosting efforts are disproportionately effective there. That's all.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Based on accounts I’ve read of what vendors have to do in order to sell on Walmart shelves (most notably reduce their quality to let Walmart be the lowest price), I think that conflict of interest would actually make shopping on the internet better.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> In fact, I can probably wander the entire Walmart store in about 30-45 minutes and see everything they are selling in that store. I'm pretty sure this can't be done. Consider how frequent it is to intend to purchase a particular item, which you know the store stocks, and yet be unable to find it even though you're looking for it in the correct aisle. What if we ran the following experiment: 1. We give the subject a particular item to look for. They know what they're supposed to find. 2. The subject looks through the Walmart for up to 60 minutes for that item. They can't ask for help. 3. We then ask a single question, "is this item in stock at this Walmart?" What percentage of subjects would answer correctly?
- zamadatix 6y ago
  There is a difference between seeing everything (or at least the vast majority of things) and remembering everything. Assuming that for the most part like items are clumped together it doesn't matter if you can remember if Lay's southern barbecue was in stock it matters if, when strolling down the aisle, you were able to see the majority of the chips in one place. It's a bit like sequential read vs random read. In a physical store it's largely possible to sequentially read the inventory even if you can't quickly search for individual items randomly quickly. On Amazon you're not going to go through all of the aisles sequentially, at best you go in knowing exactly what virtual aisles you want and then you can sequentially search that and even then the best it's going to work out is the worst case of walking through the entire store for an hour.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    You appear to be talking about something fairly different from what my comment addresses. > it doesn't matter if you can remember if Lay's southern barbecue was in stock it matters if, when strolling down the aisle, you were able to see the majority of the chips in one place. Perhaps, but I didn't ask about this. The challenge is that you are told in advance that you're looking for Lay's Southern Barbecue. Remembering whether it's there is not difficult, because it's the only thing you want. The difficult part is determining whether it's there. > In a physical store it's largely possible to sequentially read the inventory even if you can't quickly search for individual items randomly quickly. Again, this badly misunderstands what I was saying. It is not possible to sequentially read the inventory in a physical store; if this were possible, determining whether or not a particular product existed in the store would be trivial. Instead, this task is one that people routinely fail at.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

Are you suggesting that physically going to a Walmart and walking down the aisle to view all the toilet paper options is more "practical" than typing walmart.com, searching for toilet paper, and scrolling through the options? Personally, I find it much easier to search for products at home. It's literally seconds versus at least 10 to 15 minutes to get to the nearest store and browse around. And what is the use case for browsing all of the products in a store? I can't imagine why I would need to walk around an entire Walmart.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> Are you suggesting that physically going to a Walmart and walking down the aisle to view all the toilet paper options is more "practical" than typing walmart.com, searching for toilet paper, and scrolling through the options? No. I am saying that once you are at Walmart, staring at the the end cap toilet paper, it is more practical to just walk down the aisle scanning the rest of the toilet paper available, than it it is to go through the many pages of results on either walmart.com or amazon.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I guess that's true, but I don't see the purpose of that comparison. Also, if the website is designed well, such as Home Depot, it's actually better to use the Home Depot website on your phone to find what you need, and it tells you exactly where it is in the aisle. It would take me longer to search through all the products in the aisle to find exactly what I need. Might not be the case for an item such as Toilet Paper, but websites that let me drill down into the attribute of the product I need are super useful.
  - stonogo 6y ago
    > I guess that's true, but I don't see the purpose of that comparison. There is more noise online, so signal-boosting efforts are disproportionately effective there. That's all.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Based on accounts I’ve read of what vendors have to do in order to sell on Walmart shelves (most notably reduce their quality to let Walmart be the lowest price), I think that conflict of interest would actually make shopping on the internet better.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> In fact, I can probably wander the entire Walmart store in about 30-45 minutes and see everything they are selling in that store. I'm pretty sure this can't be done. Consider how frequent it is to intend to purchase a particular item, which you know the store stocks, and yet be unable to find it even though you're looking for it in the correct aisle. What if we ran the following experiment: 1. We give the subject a particular item to look for. They know what they're supposed to find. 2. The subject looks through the Walmart for up to 60 minutes for that item. They can't ask for help. 3. We then ask a single question, "is this item in stock at this Walmart?" What percentage of subjects would answer correctly?

zamadatix 6y ago
There is a difference between seeing everything (or at least the vast majority of things) and remembering everything. Assuming that for the most part like items are clumped together it doesn't matter if you can remember if Lay's southern barbecue was in stock it matters if, when strolling down the aisle, you were able to see the majority of the chips in one place. It's a bit like sequential read vs random read. In a physical store it's largely possible to sequentially read the inventory even if you can't quickly search for individual items randomly quickly. On Amazon you're not going to go through all of the aisles sequentially, at best you go in knowing exactly what virtual aisles you want and then you can sequentially search that and even then the best it's going to work out is the worst case of walking through the entire store for an hour.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  You appear to be talking about something fairly different from what my comment addresses. > it doesn't matter if you can remember if Lay's southern barbecue was in stock it matters if, when strolling down the aisle, you were able to see the majority of the chips in one place. Perhaps, but I didn't ask about this. The challenge is that you are told in advance that you're looking for Lay's Southern Barbecue. Remembering whether it's there is not difficult, because it's the only thing you want. The difficult part is determining whether it's there. > In a physical store it's largely possible to sequentially read the inventory even if you can't quickly search for individual items randomly quickly. Again, this badly misunderstands what I was saying. It is not possible to sequentially read the inventory in a physical store; if this were possible, determining whether or not a particular product existed in the store would be trivial. Instead, this task is one that people routinely fail at.