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Amazon Says It Puts Customers First - But Its Pricing Algorithm Doesn't (propublica.org)
ProPublica has a report today in which it warns Amazon shoppers about the results that they see on the shopping portal. It notes that people often hope that the results that come up first after a search are the best deals, and that's what Amazon will have you believe, but its algorithm doesn't work that way. In what may surprise many, in more than 80 percent of cases, Amazon ranks its own products, or those of its affiliate partners higher. From the report: Amazon does give customers a chance to comparison shop, with a listing that ranks all vendors of the same item by "price + shipping." It appears to be the epitome of Amazon's customer-centric approach. But there, too, the company gives itself an oft-decisive advantage. Its rankings omit shipping costs only for its own products and those sold by companies that pay Amazon for its services. Erik Fairleigh, a spokesman for Amazon, said the algorithm that selects which product goes into the "buy box" accounts for a range of factors beyond price. "Customers trust Amazon to have great prices, but that's not all -- vast selection, world-class customer service and fast, free delivery are critically important," he said in an e-mailed statement. "These components, and more, determine our product listings."
When I buy an item, I will pay more to get it directly from Amazon or from a seller that ships through Prime. That way I don't get screwed if there is something wrong.
My own data points as a non-prime customer...
- Not that long ago items purchased using "free shipping" arrived at my door 2-4 days after order; now its 2 weeks.
- Free shipping orders seem to sit in a queue for up to 10 calendar days before being shipped now.
- I've seen items in shopping cart suddenly get flagged as 'we're sorry, this product is now only available for Prime customers' and moved to the second cart.
- With paid 2-day shipping, my items hang around 2-4 days before being shipped.
For me, this all happened RIGHT as I was about to finally purchase Prime. Since I noticed this, I will never purchase Prime. And I've started shopping around for all my large purchases again, which are now made mostly elsewhere.
a spokesman for Amazon said the algorithm that selects which product goes into the "buy box" accounts for a range of factors beyond price. "Customers trust Amazon to have great prices, but that's not all -- vast selection, world-class customer service and fast, free delivery are critically important,"
If I want to buy a widget and I'm looking for the one rated best or cheapest or whatever, why would that rating be affected by (a) how big Amazon's selection of products is (b) how good Amazon's customer service is (c) Amazon offering free delivery. Those things may be important in deciding whether or not to buy from Amazon, but how is any of that even remotely relevant to which widget is best or cheapest?
What a load of fuck.
Amazon closely guards the exact algorithm that chooses who has the buy box. It is known that they strongly favor themselves (of course.. they want the sales). So much so that I often avoid items that Amazon fulfills themselves unless the ROI and/or rank are very good, or my research indicates that amazon regularly runs out of an item and I can exploit the inevitable price jump during those restocking gaps.
If you want more info on how the buy box works, there is a company called feedvisor that does repricing and other services for amazon vendors. I do not use their services (I use others), but they give away a yearly buy box bible. This uses information culled from their clients amazon seller accounts to see how competition and pricing and other changes affect buy box percentage and sales.
http://feedvisor.com/r/resourc... - warning it does require email registration, but it is an interesting read.
Silence is a state of mime.
The most likely algorithm being used by Amazon is to take 1% or less of the results that actually matched the query, throw away all the other matches, and backfill with 99% containing what Amazon wants to sell without any reference whatsoever to what was requested.
Sounds like someone at Amazon copied Google's search algorithm.
...to repeat customers.
Maybe I'm misremembering this, but wasn't there a similar but more scandalous Amazon pricing technique where they were actually tracking customers and jacking up prices to repeat buyers?
Maybe they gave that up due to bad press or maybe they weren't doing it all.
I'm pretty sure airlines have done this -- I've looked at flights a couple of times and when I was ready to book, bam, price had gone up. Checked from another device where I hadn't looked at flights (using a different browser) and I had the original price.
I know Dell did something like this years ago, too -- logged into their site with some corporate credentials and priced a server, did the same thing from another computer/browser which had never used them and the price was a lot lower.
Several years ago, everything I ordered off Amazon with "free super saver shipping" would arrive in a day or so anyway, despite my picking the slow option. Then after they started really pushing Prime, the super saver shipping got much slower (I think because they'd just wait for a week before sending it out). Funny, that.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Almost like they were spending extra to test out their capabilities before committing to Prime-level SLAs for more people. It's load testing. Hell, it's what I'd do.
Actually I get better results using google search with "site:amazon.com" than I get with searching within amazon.
227-3517
you can pay for various speeds of shipping. As people use the priority ones more the slower ones get slower as there are less gaps to insert the slow ones into and they get even slower.
everyone knows this.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.