4 ms·

Brands help consumers make reliable purchasing decisions. Amazon fucks this up all the time by trying to homogenize products and force you to discriminate on ad

by wilde 4y ago

Brands help consumers make reliable purchasing decisions. Amazon fucks this up all the time by trying to homogenize products and force you to discriminate on ad placement and price. Look at any category of consumer packaged goods on Amazon. If I search for “stroller rain cover” I get back 1000 identical products with identical fake ratings. Making a choice is hard, and if I make the wrong one my baby gets lead poisoning. Branding lets me use my past experiences to make that decision process easier. I don’t want to have to look at technical specs and try to SAT solve for the optimal choice in my head or play secret hitler and read 1000s of ratings.

HardlyCognizant 4y ago
Unfortunately, with the advent of things like Badge Engineering, brand has now become a prisoner's dilemma problem. Eventually, the brand will sell out and people will fall victim to the switch. There are obviously exceptions, but it happens frequently enough these days that trusting a brand anymore is unreliable.
izzydata 4y ago
Ideally this should mean everyone immediately stops using Amazon for being too unreliable.
- Fatnino 4y ago
  But not everyone gets burned at the same time so it's a gradual exodus. Plenty of time for Amazon to rebrand themselves as aliexpress/banggood clone with American shipping times.
w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
Except when Amazon allows third party sellers, located on a fake address, to sell counterfeit products and does nothing when you report them.
65 4y ago
It's true. I was trying to buy a light box to take product photos with. Amazon seems to only list the crappy light boxes from China. I had to go to B&H's website to find brand name products. Maybe the Chinese light boxes work just fine, but I'd rather spend an extra $10 on a brand name knowing I'm not going to get something that'll break or work poorly. Brands equate to reputation.

by wilde 4y ago

HardlyCognizant 4y ago

Unfortunately, with the advent of things like Badge Engineering, brand has now become a prisoner's dilemma problem. Eventually, the brand will sell out and people will fall victim to the switch. There are obviously exceptions, but it happens frequently enough these days that trusting a brand anymore is unreliable.

izzydata 4y ago

Ideally this should mean everyone immediately stops using Amazon for being too unreliable.

Fatnino 4y ago
But not everyone gets burned at the same time so it's a gradual exodus. Plenty of time for Amazon to rebrand themselves as aliexpress/banggood clone with American shipping times.

w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago

Except when Amazon allows third party sellers, located on a fake address, to sell counterfeit products and does nothing when you report them.

65 4y ago

It's true. I was trying to buy a light box to take product photos with. Amazon seems to only list the crappy light boxes from China. I had to go to B&H's website to find brand name products. Maybe the Chinese light boxes work just fine, but I'd rather spend an extra $10 on a brand name knowing I'm not going to get something that'll break or work poorly. Brands equate to reputation.