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>This is different from the service offered by traditional grocery stores which offer many different products, but are not arranging those products in relation to a particular request.

Grocery stores (and all other brick-and-mortars) spend tons and tons of money and effort specifically arranging their stores to influence which products you will buy. It's done on the scale of which aisle certain products are on, all the way down to the scale of specifically which shelf (and even exact inches away from eye level) certain products are on.

Every single time you walk into a store, the first product you see (maybe in front of the entryway, maybe it's a big banner hanging from the ceiling, or maybe it's the design of the shelf near the cash register) is all meticulously planned.

Yes, they do. That's why I said they "are not arranging those products in relation to a particular request." We are all in the same store, and that store must arrange itself in a way that will serve all customers. Amazon's business model is premised on the idea that they provide a better service than that.

> That's why I said they "are not arranging those products in relation to a particular request."

But they are, which is what you're missing. Again, these stores spend millions and millions of dollars collecting these requests and arranging their store in response. They collect feedback and rearrange the shelves nearly every day based on requests (which can be actual verbal/written requests on their website or to store workers, or derived from things like sales numbers).

You can think of it in this way: each time someone goes to the "Chips" aisle, that is a implicit "request" from the customer that they want to buy chips, and the store has arranged their aisle in such a way that influences which chips you buy, just as Amazon arranges their search results page.

I'm with you as far as generic categories go. Going to the cheese and dairy section in a supermarket is very similar to going to the Amazon cheese and dairy (and eggs) section[1].

Stores maximizing the revenue they receive from their average customer, which they do quite aggressively as you note, feels very different from what Amazon is doing.

>the store has arranged their aisle in such a way that influences which chips you buy, just as Amazon arranges their search results page.

To make a somewhat silly comparison that illustrates how this is is not "just" like Amazon - I have never been in a grocery store that places their brand of chips on both ends of the chips aisle. I might find my chips before I see their brand. Amazon, on the other hand, can rearrange their shelves for every customer, and so their ability to manipulate the consumer experience is much greater.

Ultimately the arranging of physical displays, no matter the amount of zeal or data involved, seems categorically different to me than stores which can arranged differently not only for every customer, but every customer request. I think you're saying they're basically the same thing - in which case we'll just have to agree to disagree.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=lp_16310101_nr_n_6?fst=as%3Aoff...

How often have you been in a pharmacy and seen the generic CVS brand on both ends of the aisle before seeing the pharma brand? There's a lot of people working on making that 100% without violating their contracts with their suppliers

Or signs next to their house-branded products that basically say "Buy $FAMOUS_BRAND $X if you like but if you look at the ingredients you'll see we're the exact same thing and we're cheaper."

You're basically saying that because Amazon has better agility, and can effectively rearrange their "shelves" faster than Target can (Amazon can rearrange them between every customer, whereas Target can only do it maybe once a day), Amazon should be punished for that? I just don't really see why or how that makes a difference.

To extend it again to the grocery store example, if I walk into a Target and ask the customer service person for their recommendation for some crackers, and they walk over to the Cracker aisle and point directly at the Target brand crackers instead of the Nabisco ones, are you saying that's problematic?

Yes, stores that push the products made by them over other alternatives are worse for the customer and harmful to the market.

I don't think there's anything wrong with stores recommending something in general. For instance, I don't think there's anything wrong with the "amazon's choice" label that Amazon uses.

This feels different to me, because as I said originally, this isn't Amazon recommending their brand. Amazon still ranks search results based on some combination of popularity and (probably) profitability.

To return to the in-store scenario: let's say you asked someone in Target to recommend crackers. The employee has a recommendation, but to hear it you first need to be shown the Target brand crackers, and then the employee will give you their recommendation.

Brands pay for placement. Promoting a store brand over another brand that paid for placement, not one that is necessarily better, is not a problem IMO. It is good business. You're gonna lose advertising dollars, but that's a business decision. To survive, some brands will need to find a way to cut out the middleman - Amazon

I'd like to believe stores were setup in that fashion, but we've known for a long time that isn't true. It benefits the store, not serve customers. A good example from Costco: https://www.businessinsider.com/costco-store-layouts-are-con...

Sure, and it probably helps sell those things, but there are several differences between those to that makes them extremely different in practice.

1. There's limited space at the front of a brick and mortar store. It's not practical to put most of the items at the front, so anyone who's not just there for a bag of chips ends up looking through the aisles anyways.

2. Brick-and-mortar stores usually only sell a few forms of same product. If I want olive oil, there's some store brand, some italian-looking brand, and maybe a brand that advertises some sort of magical health benefits. There might be a few variations for the level of refinement/virginity. It's easy for me to look at all the options and compare them. When I look at a search page on Amazon, there's often 100's of hits, and it's often pretty unclear if there's any difference between them that I'd care about (see https://www.amazon.com/s?k=olive+oil).

Theoretically Amazon has infinite shelf space, but in reality, no one really scrolls past the first few pages.

So in reality, if your product is on page 5, it is perhaps as good as not being on Amazon anyway for that particular query.

If you look at it this way, the space constraint isn't much different than brick and mortar.

It's more different than you think because there are many permutations of search terms. There are products that rank really well for odd phrasings of a product search term but not well for the most popular variations. There is also virtual shelf space for weird, niche items with additional features that are not that popular. Amazon aggregates hundreds of thousands of small businesses globally and also tailors search results to FBA warehouse availability. So for example if the warehouses near you are well stocked with product A and not product B you will see product A ranked relatively higher than product B would if you are a prime subscriber, but you will get neutral results when logged out or a non-prime subscriber.

Then you throw in Amazon Shopping ads (aka Sponsored Products) and the shelf space metaphor gets muddled further, because it's like as if every store visitor saw unique and different endcap displays and shelving ordering. There is less individual tailoring to search results than you might expect on Amazon (especially compared to information search engines like GoogleBingBingGo) but it is still a factor.

Then there is the factor of endemic counterfeiting in some categories, so the sketchier the listings are the more likely you are to just buy a counterfeit product, which would never happen in a typical brick and mortar retail shop.

IMO Amazon's private labels are so minor and make up such a small portion of store sales that it ranks very low on the scale of things that Amazon does that are morally/legally questionable.

>1. There's limited space at the front of a brick and mortar store. It's not practical to put most of the items at the front, so anyone who's not just there for a bag of chips ends up looking through the aisles anyways.

There's limited space on the frontpage of Amazon.com, too. If I go to Amazon looking for chips, I won't see it on the front page so I'm going to end up going to the Chips section of the site. If you're just at the store for a bag of chips, you go the chips aisle, which is also meticulously planned to specifically influence which brand of chips you will buy. I fail to see how this is any different than going to the Chips section of Amazon and seeing a specially arranged selection of chips.

>2. Brick-and-mortar stores usually only sell a few forms of same product. If I want olive oil, there's some store brand, some italian-looking brand, and maybe a brand that advertises some sort of magical health benefits. There might be a few variations for the level of refinement/virginity. It's easy for me to look at all the options and compare them. When I look at a search page on Amazon, there's often 100's of hits, and it's often pretty unclear if there's any difference between them that I'd care about (see https://www.amazon.com/s?k=olive+oil).

I don't really see what this has to do with the topic at hand. Can you clarify your point?

You're agreeing with the comment you responded to. They're saying amazons value is that they don't do that, showing the best products for you instead of the highest margin ones. Not sure I agree with them considering the top products are ads though.

>Grocery stores (and all other brick-and-mortars) spend tons and tons of money and effort specifically arranging their stores

And if I don't like Tesco I can go to Asda. If Tesco won't sell my product I can try and sell it to Sainsbury's or Waitrose.

The equivalent with Amazon is "If I don't like Walmart, there is some guy with a market stall selling fish, another with apples, a store 5 miles away that has carrots...". Or even, "Tescos won't buy my carrots so I will just drive them to every person myself".

I have said it a few times, you can't be the marketplace and sell through that marketplace. Imagine finding the NYSE were trading shares, and were giving themselves 30ms advantage over everyone else (if you can't imagine, have a browse of the Cryptocurrency markets). Imagine a commodities market who own 90% of the oil themselves, and price themselves into every order (maybe onions...).

Financial market is regulated and hence you dont that conflict of interest. They are also there to prevent anything catastrophic from happening. Selling Commodities in Retail isn't the same.

Where do you draw the line between "marketplace" and "retail store?" For the NYSE it seems fairly clear, but in retail it seems less so. Nearly every widespread retail store I know of either sells primary a multitude of other company's products but also has some store brand options, or primarily sells their own branded items but also sells other company's products in areas where they don't have a first-party offering.

If you don't like Amazon you can try Walmart.com. And hey--if I click on "Household Essentials" on Walmart.com, there's a "Brands We Love" section, with the first brand being Great Value, the Walmart store brand.

Not sure if you realized how ironic your NYSE comment was given semi recent news...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyse-jeffrey-c-sprecher-kelly-l...

> you can’t be the marketplace and sell through that marketplace

To be competitive, you can and you should.

Amazon is a platform company. Platforms commoditize the complements. They didn’t have toys, so partner Toys’R’Us, didn’t have shoes, so partner Zappos, etc.

As the platform, platforms observe transactions, such that through time, they can value complements and decide to co-exist, acquire, or compete.

This is by now a well-known strategy.

Rabbit hole: https://www.gwern.net/Complement

Just as long as, being Zappos, if you sell through Amazon, expect Amazon branded shoes a couple months to years down the road.

Manufacturers pay chain supermarkets "slotting fees" for prime shelf space so while isle layout may be meticulously planned, the actual product placement per category is often up to how much suppliers are willing to pay. That's one of the reasons why branded products continue to do well against their generic equivalents.

> Amazon's brand (as a store / marketplace) is that it helps you sort through many options to select the product they believe you will like the best

This is an extremely important part of the service that every store provides. The only difference with Amazon is that they offer a wider selection of everything. In brick and mortar stores, only one or a few products of each type are stocked and the rest are simply not offered. You don't think about the store providing the service of sorting the products that they decided not to offer, but they do.

Now that we have ubiquitous Internet access, I think it's important to reinforce the point that you shouldn't use a store - whether a brick&mortar or on-line - as a product discovery and recommendation engine. You won't find the best value for money this way.

Then what do you recommend?

The other difference with Amazon is that they have very low quality enforcement, and offer counterfeit items. So "Amazon Basics" is a strong indicator of quality for commodities and they can charge as much or more than for brand name items.

A Safeway house brand is usually offered at a small discount to the name brand, because the consumer trusts the name brand more.

Yep. If I need a USB cable or some other electronics commodity, I at least know that the Amazon Basics isn't a knock-off and it's at least good enough. That, of course, reflects badly on Amazon in other ways but it is, as you say different from store brands which are mostly about undercutting perceived premium brands with good enough product for people who aren't fussy. (Or for offering a cheaper alternative for things that really are commodities.)

> Amazon's brand (as a store / marketplace) is that it helps you sort through many options to select the product they believe you will like the best. This is different from the service offered by traditional grocery stores which offer many different products, but are not arranging those products in relation to a particular request.

Is that really true? Maybe once upon a time, but Amazon is the last place I turn to when trying to find a product that's suitable for purpose. As their marketplace has become a wasteland of cheap knock-offs and fake reviews, I find the only way to successfully use the site is to first find a product on an external review site (i.e. NYT's "Wirecutter") or search specifically only for brands I already know and limit the results to those sold directly from Amazon.

"The same is true of any other algorithmic sorting."

This is the same problem that Google creates.

Imagine if the Yellow Pages advertisements, listed categorically and alphabetically, were re-sorted according to an algorithm according to whomever was accessing them.

To use a popular term, sorting has been "weaponised".

It is a form of filtering, curation, gatekeeping. Businesses compete to pass through the filters, past the gate.

For example, when a user selects an app for her phone, she selects from a "top 10" or some such. As with being on "page one" of Google search results, manipulating the algorithm becomes a goal. Another popular term online, "winner take all" or "network effect", is in part enabled through sorting. All those hundreds of thousands of other apps are sorted out to create a "top 10" for which all must compete.

Instead of letting users sort results on their own initiative, e.g., according to popularity or rating, listings are sorted by default.

Alphabetical listings do not create the competition that drives up the value of the "top 10" or "page one". Alphabeticisation is a transparent algorithm everyone can understand, not a trade secret.

Even on HN, we see comments re-arranged in their order in a thread, in order to manipulate reader response.

There is certainly an element of utility and convenience but, in effect and perhaps by intent, there is more to the sorting than simply what may benefit the user.

Amazon started out being the retailer, and moved into the space of being a platform. I remember way back when they only sold products from themselves. coincidentally the more amazon moved to being a platform for 3rd party sellers, the less I used them l.

I rarely use amazon for anything today because the volume of garbage easily outweighs the good products, mad it's like rolling craps dice if you get a good seller. I opt to purchase directly from the manufacturer or a known retailer that know owns the product they are selling now, if I use amazon, it is exclusively for amazon brand products only.

if this type of behavior pushes 3rd party sellers off the platform and returns amazon to their glory days of being the actual retailer, I think it's a good move

This is the same scaling problem that all market places have had. eBay used to have quality stuff on it, now it’s pretty much just a drop shipping front, same thing happened to Etsy. The Amazon marketplace is increasingly filled with low quality products, completely fake reviews, illegal knockoffs, and it’s search has been getting worse over time.

The key advantage that Amazon has over other retailers (for consumers at least) is that its logistics are so damn good. I’ll usually go to Amazon first to look for what I want, because I know they’ll probably ship it faster. But more often than not I usually end up buying from a more specialized retailer for one reason or another.

> Amazon's brand (as a store / marketplace) is that it helps you sort through many options to select the product they believe you will like the best.

Is that their brand though? I've never been convinced of that due to all the sponsored results (which are very similar to how brick-and-mortar stores arrange their products) and most egregiously, not providing consistent per unit pricing. I've never felt like Amazon is helping me make the right choice at all, but rather duping me into a choice that benefits them.

> you might imagine a supermarket which stocks all brands, but the first item in every row is the store-brand equivalent of that product which you must remove to get to the branded one.

I think this is going a bit too far. "removing to get to the branded one" would be appropriate if you had to go to 2nd page of search results to see branded products, but most results on Amazon show competing products above the fold.

A better comparison would be reserving the best shelf space for Amazon Basics.

> different from the service offered by traditional grocery stores which offer many different products, but are not arranging those products in relation to a particular request

That is incorrect. You may be surprised to learn that grocery stores sell prime shelf space to distributors/brands.[0]. In this case, it's the distributer's request - not yours.

[0]https://cspinet.org/news/supermarkets-%E2%80%9Crigged%E2%80%...

For me, Amazon helps me sort through many options to select the product that _I_ believe I will like best. I am not stupid. If I see an Amazon branded item I will obviously meet its placement with some kind of suspicion. In fact, I will dig a bit harder into the reviews. Do the batteries really last as long as some of the brand name ones? Let me see if it's worth the cheaper price. That sort of thing.

Amazon can be the e-commerce site and sell commodity things. It would be different if it lacked transparency or was trying to hide it's involvement in the private labels.

To your last point, to me, it feels that they try to hide their private labels. Some are named “Amazon XXX” but most are not: Solimo, Presto and countless clothing brands.

I mostly realise that they are Amazon brands when I notice they are strongly pushed by Amazon’s algorithm.

That's interesting. Could the solution just be a requirement to disclose this more plainly?

How is this different than using Target? Or Walmart online?

Amazon had the absolute worst product search engine since the beginning of time. This is probably on purpose to set this up since inception.