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Comment by MChristopherson | Hacker News Reader

"Many retailers reserve some of their best shelves paces for their private label products"

A key difference is that in those situations (a grocery store, for example), the marketplace owners have already purchased all the products on the shelves. It's the grocery store's decision to choose what and how the products that they have paid for are presented to customers.

This is not a hundred-percent comparison, of course, but it came to mind in the last number of weeks as this Amazon topic has come up.

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> A key difference is that in those situations (a grocery store, for example), the marketplace owners have already purchased all the products on the shelves. It's the grocery store's decision to choose what and how the products that they have paid for are presented to customers.

Is this actually true these days? I was under the impression that this varied by product.

It might work like that in a mom-and-pop corner store, but for most retailers it is much more complicated than that. Larger stories like Target don't just buy a truckload of Playstations and then put them on the shelf. Instead, one of the ways it happens is that Target works out a specific deal with Sony where Sony essentially 'rents' the shelf space, and Sony then gets to design where on the shelf their products go and is responsible for filling the shelves.

Other agreements might be to for Target to purchase a certain amount of Playstations but only as long as Target places them on the top shelf. These are just two of the many different ways that the shelves get filled. In these examples, it's much much harder to draw a comparison to Amazon without knowing how Amazon makes similar agreements with its sellers.

(Target and Sony are just examples, I don't know if Target actually does contract specifically with Sony in this way)

I agree, and should have expanded my "not a direct comparison" more clearly to expand on the more nuanced situation. But, I mean my point kind of at the more general level that the topic concerning Amazon often starts at: everyone's (and mine as well) first thought is to mentally compare to a grocery store with own-brand products competing with name-brand versions. In many cases, tho absolutely not all as you correctly point out, the jars of mayonnaise from Kraft and from Safeway are both bought and paid for by Safeway.

So, while that is not an absolutely example (as lots of stuff in the store is still owned by the separate vending companies), it is a good caveat to our first "grocery stores do it" thought that comes to mind when thinking about this Amazon topic.

So if a store decides to sell things on consignment they no longer have power over how the products are displayed?

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