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Amazon Doles Out Freebies To Juice Sales of Its Own Brands (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon cracked down on fake reviews two years ago by prohibiting shoppers from getting free products directly from merchants in exchange for writing reviews. It was a major turning point for the world's largest online retailer, which had previously seen "incentivized reviews" as a key way for consumers to discover new products. Amazon changed course because it realized some merchants were using such reviews to game its search algorithm, undermining faith in the customer feedback that helps drive e-commerce.
Amazon instead used its "Vine" program, in which Amazon serves as a middleman between prolific Amazon reviewers and vendors eager for exposure. Amazon would still allow freebies in exchange for feedback so long as there was no direct contact between its retail partners and reviewers, theoretically lessening the chance of quid-pro-quo. Amazon would select shoppers eligible for the program, and Amazon vendors would pay a fee and provide free products to participate. But there was an important group excluded from the Vine program: independent merchants who supply about half the goods sold on the site.
Now those excluded merchants and review watchdogs are alleging Amazon is guilty of the review manipulation the company said it was trying to prevent. Amazon uses Vine extensively to promote a fast-growing assortment of its own private-label products, distributing free samples to quickly accumulate the reviews needed to rise in search results and boost shopper faith in making a purchase. It gives Amazon a big advantage when introducing its own brands over third-party merchants who are more vulnerable to Amazon's private-label competition than prominent brands already in stores.
Amazon instead used its "Vine" program, in which Amazon serves as a middleman between prolific Amazon reviewers and vendors eager for exposure. Amazon would still allow freebies in exchange for feedback so long as there was no direct contact between its retail partners and reviewers, theoretically lessening the chance of quid-pro-quo. Amazon would select shoppers eligible for the program, and Amazon vendors would pay a fee and provide free products to participate. But there was an important group excluded from the Vine program: independent merchants who supply about half the goods sold on the site.
Now those excluded merchants and review watchdogs are alleging Amazon is guilty of the review manipulation the company said it was trying to prevent. Amazon uses Vine extensively to promote a fast-growing assortment of its own private-label products, distributing free samples to quickly accumulate the reviews needed to rise in search results and boost shopper faith in making a purchase. It gives Amazon a big advantage when introducing its own brands over third-party merchants who are more vulnerable to Amazon's private-label competition than prominent brands already in stores.
Bezos is keeping all the good stuff for himself and selling it on fleabay.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wow, you sound angry! Perhaps you should be gayer.
Wow, a company is putting its own interests ahead of other companies? Is anyone surprised by this? They aren't a public service that is required to treat each company that sells through their site equal treatment, they are a corporation doing what corporations do - making money. Next up, we'll discuss the OUTRAGE of water that is wet.
Enigma
Allowing people to edit reviews after the fact is probably just as bad in terms of having a trustworthy platform.
Case in point:
I bought a cheap xbox 360 compatible controller from some rando Chinese company. It of course, was a total piece of shit. (battery terminals had a faulty contact, thumb-stick's were lacking in sensitivity. poor battery life etc) -- it was just materially inferior in every way to a proper model.
So I post a scathing review; stating these facts. A few days later I get a message from the company offering to refund my purchase entirely (and let me keep the item) If i'd change the review to at least 4 stars, and list something positive about it.
I'm assuming this is a pretty common practice. And a consumer lacking scruples might just go ahead and take the bait.
Amazon has Sales of Juices, which are all Amazon branded? And those sales get freebies? I'm confused...
lol fag
They all give four or five star reviews, no matter how terrible the product is. If they start giving negative reviews, the free merch might stop flowing. So everything is great, regardless of how shitty it is. For instance, here is a four star review of a glove dispenser that the Vine reviewer (and several other customers) say is too large for most boxes of gloves. Four stars for something that didn't work at all:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R29FWBNLLM6SJ2/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B071FJ96P2
I'd love to see them broke up like AT&T.
Amazon has 4% of the retail market. For online retail, they have 30%.
They are no where near a monopoly. Almost anything Amazon sells, you can buy elsewhere.
Comparing Amazon to AT&T is silly.
Publishers Weekly (for bookstores) and Library Journal (for libraries), as well as other reviewing platforms, such as Kirkus Reviews, commonly receive advanced copies to send out for review. The deal is that the reviewer gets to keep the book. In the case of galleys, which are often printed on newsprint, or other 'advanced copy' formats, the publisher is obligated to send a final bound copy to the reviewer when it is available. It's one of the best ways publishers can advertise their books without a huge advertising budget, which is reserved for bestselling authors where the return is greater. This seen as 'fair payment' for a review and never considered as somehow unfair or unethical.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
an 82 inch television, and a years worth of free food to clean up some of my previous reviews.
What's it like to be an insane psychopath?
They're not a monopoly.
You don't like their practices. Got it.
Wishing for someone to be kidnapped by "crazies" tells me you're pretty fucking crazy yourself.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Dole? Juice? Maybe I've been reading too many Arstechnica articles from that Beth gal.
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Only if they are serious, if it is satirical ie likening working at Amazon to being kidnapped by crazies and having to ransom yourself out by forced labour, then kind of funny. Does Bezos come off as infinitely greedy, yeah, kinda. Needs to do much more to look after the people making him his fortune, unlikely to happen. Probably a lot of his staff would be content to see Bezos kidnapped by crazies and never return, to be replaced by an employer that realises, their employees make the companies money.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The Amazons were chicks tho. Ergo not gay.
As a Vine Voice (reviewer) for ~7 years, my experience was that there was absolutely no pressure or incentive to give positive reviews to products regardless of whether they were Amazon's brands or not. The algos they used to select who got offered the shiny products were not disclosed, but did not seem to me (or anyone I communicated with on the Vine forum) to be disproportionately offered to reviewers who routinely rated products more positively. Also, I had written several 1 and 2-star reviews at the time I was offered membership in Vine. To Amazon's credit, they ran the program pretty well until they switched to a revolving list of items you can select instead of limiting people to 2 or 4 per month. This promoted fake reviews as people wanted to churn through their lists fast, as you could only have so many outstanding products awaiting reviews. It went further downhill when they decided to permit members to sell the products they received, further promoting fake reviews. Why open your product to review it if you can sell it for twice as much NIB? This was done in response to Amazon distributing 1099 forms to anyone who received more than $600 in products in a year. This also negatively impacted the quality of reviews from Vine since it made reviewers less apathetic to whether they thought they would actually want/use/like the product. Although it did help in some ways, since before items were taxed you might see a review for a $2000 saxaphone to the effect of "My 5-year old grandson loves this saxphone so much. It is very shiny. I think it will sound really great when he learns to play it because it seems so well made."
The sheer volume of fake, misleading, biased, or unhelpful reviews on the site has severely impeded the main reason that used to attract me (and most of the people I know) to Amazon. The reviews can still be worth reading despite having to weed through a bunch of useless ones, but the star ratings have become almost meaningless. Amazon does try to aggressively combat this issue, but they don't seem to be winning the battle. After 1000+ reviews (mostly Vine), I was red-flagged by their system for violating some TOS (they would not specify, but I think it was because I tried to sell a used product on Amazon that I had reviewed for Vine) and all my reviews were deleted. Thus, I could no longer continue to participate in the program. No one at Amazon seemed interested in spending 5 minutes to actually read any of my reviews to help restore the output of countless hours of work and tens of thousands of dollars invested by companies participating in Vine. This happened to dozens of other Vine Voices who were caught up in the massive purges Amazon was routinely exacting upon reviewers.
Dunno, what's it like to be an asshole with no sense of humor? I'm sure Bezos is glad that he's got at least one lil' bitch out there rooting for his greedy ass.
Wow, you sound idiotic. Maybe you should dispose of yourself quietly?
Doles...Juice... I see what you did there...:)