Some of the stuff we sell via Amazons marketplace is the cheapest on the marketplace but by no means the cheapest online. This stuff doesn't come with the same kind of shipping service that Amazon provides either, people feel safe buying through Amazon though in that the very worse outcome they can come out with is their money back.
So other sites need to not only be cheaper but also build up the same level of service and trust to get a large amount of people away from Amazon.
I just don't think this is true. There's plenty of shady and scummy stuff that Amazon can do (and other online retailers do) which Amazon doesn't do. It's far more straightforward at building customer loyalty by getting them stuff more cheaply than other retails, much faster, with free shipping by squeezing their own margins.
No. Amazon is pushing smaller sellers into their marketplace platform which is ride with counterfeits, thieves, and garbage products with fake reviews purchased on Facebook. My wife and I stopped going to Amazon because product quality started getting so bad. It's to the point that I trust Alibaba or eBay over Amazon, which is a shame. I suspect there's a lot of less vocal people in the same boat who've started exploring other merchants.
I don't think it is possible to have a viable alternative to Amazon without running into the same problems Amazon has.
The alternatives that more and more people seems to be preferring is specialty sites focusing on just one or two product categories or the manufacturer making it easier to buy directly from them.
I would like an alternative to Amazon, but have not yet found anything directly comparable. Despite promises to the contrary, eBay sellers are almost always charging a higher price. Shipping is slow, even from big reputable companies. Amazon has a lock on fast, inexpensive shipping, and it seems to be a very effective moat. If you buy only products 'shipped from and sold by Amazon' then the rate of fraud is low enough that the easy shopping & fast delivery keep you in the fold.
Unfortunately no -- Amazon is often ~20% cheaper than a brand's website, plus offers free shipping which brand sites often don't, and (very importantly) I can trust that I can return an item with zero hassle if it doesn't work as advertised.
Also the majority of brands don't even sell directly, only through retailers like Amazon, Wal-Mart, or Target anyways.
I believe this kind of thing is a big contributor to Amazon's hegemony in online shopping. I'm reluctant to order from other sites because there's a whole new set of dark patterns I may fall victim to. At least I'm familiar enough with Amazon to know I'm not getting charged for things I didn't intend to order, the low stock warnings are somewhat legitimate, etc. I'm not saying Amazon doesn't have its own issues, but at least it's a known quantity.
If it weren't for Amazon's dominance, other sites would be able to compete without resorting to these dark patterns, so this is a self-perpetuating cycle: people only shop on Amazon -> the only other sites that can survive are the ones that engage in deception -> trust in non-Amazon shopping sites decreases -> people only shop on Amazon -> ...
I don't mean to cast these scammy shopping websites as victims. My concern is more about how the legitimate sites that could exist don't because they're crowded out by Amazon (and other big players like Walmart) and the scammy shopping sites this article discusses.
I am a fan of Amazon's digital products and devices (the Kindle e-reader, Fire TV), but have noticed I buy fewer and fewer physical products from Amazon.
This is in part, because of ideological reasons, but also because other online shops offer a better service than Amazon, and are also reasonably priced.
In particular, I dislike that it seems to me more and more products are sold by third party sellers. I don't mind paying a bit extra from a retailer with a good reputation in my own country. I don't want to have to deal with a seller who is based in the other side of the world.
Recently I made a large order of cycling gear from a specialist shop. I couldn't imagine buying it from Amazon, as I would be concerned some would be counterfeit, or only be available if it came from about 5 different sellers, all dispatching at different times.
I've been thinking this for years now, that the free-for-all for 3rd party sellers would eventually erode trust and make Amazon less appealing. But it hasn't collapsed yet and they still keep growing.
Now I really view Amazon as two separate products in one interface - there's the Ebay style bazaar, and then there's the first-party store. If I'm looking for a brand-name item, like an iPad or some other gadget, or some camera gear, I can often find it on Amazon and it'll be "shipped from and sold by Amazon", or there are a few other sellers whose names I recognize (like Apple or Adorama for the camera gear I was recently looking at) that I trust to buy from. More and more there's also the Amazon Basics brand covering everything from batteries and usb cables to snacks like trail mix, and I have come to trust their brand as well. These things will generally ship with prime shipping and arrive in 1 or 2 days, I get 5% cash back on my amazon card, and it's convenient to check out and I generally can trust I won't have any issues.
If I'm looking for something that's not brand-name, and I want to pay the cheapest price I can for something that gets the job done, I can venture into the bazaar land. I recently bought some patio furniture and a rug that were quite cheap, and they work pretty well and have been awesome for using my outdoor space during the lockdown. In this side of the platform I know I'm making sacrifices, I often don't get prime shipping, and I may even get counterfit items. I would never buy things like vitamins or lotion or make-up here in the seedy back alleys of the store. And often I do opt to use a different e-commerce site instead of Amazon, rather than risk it here. But I still buy from here occasionally.
I still think Amazon should do more to differentiate these two worlds, the high-trust vs low-trust platforms. But as a frequent user I now know what to look for and am mostly able to distinguish between the two, and I have to admit I do appreciate that the low-trust, 3rd party world exists. It gives me more choice as a consumer, and the alternative is that most of these items wouldn't be available on Amazon at all.
Of all the "problematic" web giants, Amazon is probably the one I have the hardest time avoiding just because the value proposition is a so much better. Sure I can find the same products on other website at a similar price, but it's harder to get my money back if there's a problem shipping times are generally much worse. I have Amazon Smile setup to contribute to the EFF, but I'm sure it probably doesn't really make up for it.
It always pays to shop around, and I've actually shifted more of my business to ebay for items that are quite clearly the same cheap chinese product with X name stuck on it. Amazon doesn't reliably hit its two-day shipping mandate for me, and USPS can often beat them for smaller items.
One thing I have noticed and don't really understand: Sellers who's products are more expensive on their own site than on their Amazon page. I could understand parity, but I don't understand it being more expensive to purchase from them directly.
I had the same thought a while ago. I remember when Amazon mostly acted as a retailer, and not as a marketplace. Nowadays I don't see why I shouldn't buy on ebay or somewhere else, as the marketplace approach negates what I liked about it: everything from one company, a single parcel, easy refunds. If I receive each item from a different retailer anyways, I don't see why I should feed the beast.
I'm a consumer who uses Amazon for 90% of their online shopping and let me tell you: I'm not doing it because Amazon is cheap. In recent years more often than not, Amazon isn't actually the cheapest option except for the occasional deal for a subpar product they want to remove from their inventory (but these would be cheap in brick and mortar stores too). Even the deals are largely bogus: "Prime Day" largely exists to buy Amazon equipment at a more reasonable price point and the rest of the time the deals are either for "stocking fillers" (i.e. the kind of stuff you'd find in the discount bin at the supermarket) or noname white label dropshipping products you can barely tell apart from the real deal until they arrive.
I don't use Amazon because it's cheap. I use it because it's convenient. I can do 99% of my non-groceries shopping on Amazon and I get 30 day free returns on most products and next day delivery for some of them, not to mention free shipping on most things I buy (or near-free shipping if you consider the cost of Prime).
What's been pushing me away from Amazon recently is that they're not very good (or even increasingly worse) for some categories of products and in many cases search results are cluttered by Chinese dropshipping products to the point I can't find trustworthier brands at all or for categories I'm less familiar with have to do research to figure out which brands actually exist outside of Amazon's Chinese dropshipping hell. And again because of the free returns (and in the case of non-free returns the A-to-Z guarantee still often resulting in free returns or full refunds) this is not a cost issue but more about the reduction in convenience.
Mind you, I live in Germany and German Amazon is likely different. But Amazon is still the biggest online retailer here despite not being the cheapest. Arguably it still maintains the illusion of being the cheapest because of the free shipping (if you pay for Prime) and the constant barrage of "deals".
I'm at the point where I don't buy anything from Amazon without checking the _producer's_ website first. It seems like 90% of the stuff on Amazon is just dropshippers who add $50 to the retail price and arbitrage from people too lazy to do anything but order from one website.
And it seems to be getting easier for companies to sell their own stuff. Most places seem to be using "Shopify" now? Fine with me. The integration is usually seamless and it has worked well every time I've used it.
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.
I disagree. Their core feature is rapid, reliable delivery of the ordered item. Other sites are cheaper than Amazon, but I don't trust them to actually deliver what I order in a timely manner.
When I do shop elsewhere, I don't mind entering payment details as long as I'm not required to save them (I don't trust most sites not to be hacked and leak my payment details). But if I ever get a delivery time over a week or a 'back ordered' status, I cancel the order immediately, because I know that they don't really have the item on hand and are just gambling that they can broker the sale at a profit. I've had merchants outright admit that they can't fulfill an order unless they can add some high margin accessories to an order. Not a game I'm interested in playing.
I've pretty much switched most of my online shopping over to eBay instead of Amazon because of this. Before Amazon opened the floodgates to 3rd party sellers, I had much more confidence that I wasn't going to get scammed there or buy some counterfeit junk. Now it's probably equal likelihood as on eBay. Most of what I buy is cheaper on eBay and almost everything comes with free shipping, so the balance now favors eBay.
For things that I absolutely 100% want to get without the hassle of dealing with fraud, I'm back to the online stores of traditional retail places. :(
If Amazon could clean house of all that trash, I'd probably move my shopping back.
Yes, as a customer, I think Amazon has been accumulating negative aspects of Ebay marketplaces faster than Ebay has been acquiring positive aspects of Amazon. That said, I have recently found myself buying some products on Ebay (w/o going thru the auction rigamarole) because they're priced better than Amazon .
Some of the stuff we sell via Amazons marketplace is the cheapest on the marketplace but by no means the cheapest online. This stuff doesn't come with the same kind of shipping service that Amazon provides either, people feel safe buying through Amazon though in that the very worse outcome they can come out with is their money back.
So other sites need to not only be cheaper but also build up the same level of service and trust to get a large amount of people away from Amazon.
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