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People complain about how bad of a flea market Amazon has turned into, are people really shopping on temu?

nickthegreek 3y ago
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/chinese-e-commerce-platform-temu-drawing-shoppers-us-dollar-stores-data-2023-12-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/chinese-e-c... >As of last month, Temu accounted for nearly 17% of market share in the United States within the discount stores categories, according to data analytics firm Earnest Analytics.
candiddevmike 3y ago
Don't you want to shop like a billionaire (in an online flea market)?
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  Haha the fact that their slogan is act like a billionaire is just so amazing. Goes to show how much of the western world like money and want to appear wealthy. We really need to dig deep and get over thinking money == success.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
kaibee 3y ago
Why settle for the 2nd best flea market?
RankingMember 3y ago
The appeal of Temu and AliExpress is that a lot of the same stuff you'd buy on Amazon is there for sometimes 25% or 50% of the cost- you just have to wait a little longer to get it. That said, for however fake or skewed Amazon's reviews are, AliExpress and Temu's reviews are another level of useless. Most of the pictures are simply of packaged items, and the reviews themselves are variations of "Just got it haven't used it yet 5 stars!". My hunch is that they ran promotions to get people to write reviews at some point and got a lot of terrible, useless reviews in exchange.
jstarfish 3y ago
Temu doesn't charge Amazon prices for their Dollar Store product.
happytiger 3y ago
The problem is that Amazon is selling the same stuff at double or triple the cost of these direct marketplaces. Too much of Amazon is just marked up imports sold by meaningless brands. Companies like Temu keep happening because Amazon is not operating a cost efficient marketplace and they are vulnerable. Presumably Amazon would win because of reputation and the reliability of their return guarantees, but they’ve lost their trusted status by letting their review systems be corrupted and no longer have the high degree consumer trust that gave them such defensibility. So, some significant marketplace extraction will happen here as their suppliers essentially move up the value chain and start to eat their market, which looks like company-after-company from supply side countries making an entrance into the Western markets selling the exact same or similar products for much lower prices… exactly what we are seeing. This flattening out of the supply chain is a phenomenon that Amazon has not done a good job of protecting against. The only other big defense besides reputation is shipping speed and the risk annd complexity of importing, and perhaps at some point Amazon will wake up and start to lobby against the subsidized shipping policies. But in the short term they benefit from it too much to do so.
rootusrootus 3y ago
I liked Amazon when it wasn't just AliExpress crap marked way up. Now I've started shopping pretty much anywhere else. A lot of companies even include "free" two day shipping now to stay competitive with Prime. Amazon is steadily losing my business because they've decided to compete with the likes of Temu but at Amazon prices. I hope Temu eats their lunch. IMO, Amazon ought to reconsider the third-party strategy. At the very least, if they want to keep my interest they need a toggle that I can flip which will hide every single product that isn't shipped-from-and-sold-by-Amazon.com.
- jprete 3y ago
  The toggle isn't good enough because of their practice of commingling all suppliers' inventory of a single SKU. Shipped-from-and-sold-by-Amazon doesn't mean you're actually going to get an instance of the product they stocked themselves.
cosmojg 3y ago
Amazon is AliExpress crap marked way up. Temu is AliExpress crap marked up just a little. The real question is: why don't people just use AliExpress?
- RankingMember 3y ago
  One data point: I used to buy stuff occasionally on AliExpress, but got sick of waiting 4-6 weeks and occasionally having stuff never even show up. Temu has been burning money to gain market share, which equated to coupons that made things cheaper than AliExpress for a time, combined with 10-day-or-less shipping. They even credited me $5 on a $10 order when they were 1 day late for shipping. I've since noticed Temu starting to tighten their purse strings a little, as the free shipping minimum is now $20 instead of $10. AliExpress has also responded to the competition and seem to be using stateside warehousing for popular items (or some other magic) to match Temu's ~10 day shipping times, so I've gone back to AliExpress for the most part. AliExpress has a wider swath of product too owing, I presume, to their many years of additional time in the marketplace.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    Aliexpress is competing here and now offering "guaranteed" 14 day shipping. It's a little faster but not 2-3 days.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/chinese-e-commerce-platform-temu-drawing-shoppers-us-dollar-stores-data-2023-12-06/ https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/chinese-e-c... >As of last month, Temu accounted for nearly 17% of market share in the United States within the discount stores categories, according to data analytics firm Earnest Analytics.

candiddevmike 3y ago

Don't you want to shop like a billionaire (in an online flea market)?

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Haha the fact that their slogan is act like a billionaire is just so amazing. Goes to show how much of the western world like money and want to appear wealthy. We really need to dig deep and get over thinking money == success.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

kaibee 3y ago

Why settle for the 2nd best flea market?

RankingMember 3y ago

The appeal of Temu and AliExpress is that a lot of the same stuff you'd buy on Amazon is there for sometimes 25% or 50% of the cost- you just have to wait a little longer to get it. That said, for however fake or skewed Amazon's reviews are, AliExpress and Temu's reviews are another level of useless. Most of the pictures are simply of packaged items, and the reviews themselves are variations of "Just got it haven't used it yet 5 stars!". My hunch is that they ran promotions to get people to write reviews at some point and got a lot of terrible, useless reviews in exchange.

jstarfish 3y ago

Temu doesn't charge Amazon prices for their Dollar Store product.

happytiger 3y ago

The problem is that Amazon is selling the same stuff at double or triple the cost of these direct marketplaces. Too much of Amazon is just marked up imports sold by meaningless brands. Companies like Temu keep happening because Amazon is not operating a cost efficient marketplace and they are vulnerable. Presumably Amazon would win because of reputation and the reliability of their return guarantees, but they’ve lost their trusted status by letting their review systems be corrupted and no longer have the high degree consumer trust that gave them such defensibility. So, some significant marketplace extraction will happen here as their suppliers essentially move up the value chain and start to eat their market, which looks like company-after-company from supply side countries making an entrance into the Western markets selling the exact same or similar products for much lower prices… exactly what we are seeing. This flattening out of the supply chain is a phenomenon that Amazon has not done a good job of protecting against. The only other big defense besides reputation is shipping speed and the risk annd complexity of importing, and perhaps at some point Amazon will wake up and start to lobby against the subsidized shipping policies. But in the short term they benefit from it too much to do so.

rootusrootus 3y ago

I liked Amazon when it wasn't just AliExpress crap marked way up. Now I've started shopping pretty much anywhere else. A lot of companies even include "free" two day shipping now to stay competitive with Prime. Amazon is steadily losing my business because they've decided to compete with the likes of Temu but at Amazon prices. I hope Temu eats their lunch. IMO, Amazon ought to reconsider the third-party strategy. At the very least, if they want to keep my interest they need a toggle that I can flip which will hide every single product that isn't shipped-from-and-sold-by-Amazon.com.

jprete 3y ago
The toggle isn't good enough because of their practice of commingling all suppliers' inventory of a single SKU. Shipped-from-and-sold-by-Amazon doesn't mean you're actually going to get an instance of the product they stocked themselves.

cosmojg 3y ago

Amazon is AliExpress crap marked way up. Temu is AliExpress crap marked up just a little. The real question is: why don't people just use AliExpress?

RankingMember 3y ago
One data point: I used to buy stuff occasionally on AliExpress, but got sick of waiting 4-6 weeks and occasionally having stuff never even show up. Temu has been burning money to gain market share, which equated to coupons that made things cheaper than AliExpress for a time, combined with 10-day-or-less shipping. They even credited me $5 on a $10 order when they were 1 day late for shipping. I've since noticed Temu starting to tighten their purse strings a little, as the free shipping minimum is now $20 instead of $10. AliExpress has also responded to the competition and seem to be using stateside warehousing for popular items (or some other magic) to match Temu's ~10 day shipping times, so I've gone back to AliExpress for the most part. AliExpress has a wider swath of product too owing, I presume, to their many years of additional time in the marketplace.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Aliexpress is competing here and now offering "guaranteed" 14 day shipping. It's a little faster but not 2-3 days.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]