The 2 amazon mantras that apply here are; more selection is good, customers will never complain about a lower price.
If the selection is huge then they need to make recommendations to help people find products. I don't think many users will scroll through more than a page or two of options. The integrity of reviews makes a big impact here in how you are likely to make a choice on those first few pages.
3rd party sellers increase selection and the thought is that more selection creates a fly wheel effect that drives down prices which benefits the customer. Amazon has very limited control over 3rd party sellers but they need them to increase selection.
That said, if you go to any store there are typically a few different options in a product category with different price points and quality. Buyer beware applies in a physical store as much as at Amazon. It would be interesting to see how many consumers prefer less selection.
There is nothing stopping someone from creating a curated "quality" focused frontend that makes money on showing customers only high quality products and then making money on the affiliate referrals for the curation. If this was in high demand I think you'd see these curated stores in the wild. I've not seen one though and since I can use tools like fakespot to help determine the quality of the reviews.
>There is nothing stopping someone from creating a curated "quality" focused frontend that makes money on showing customers only high quality products and then making money on the affiliate referrals for the curation. If this was in high demand I think you'd see these curated stores in the wild. I've not seen one though and since I can use tools like fakespot to help determine the quality of the reviews.
Does anyone actually do that though?
Most retail stores that do a lot of promise on "higher quality things" in my experience are just looking for higher margins and can't help but tack on more to the price for marginally better goods.
And I don't know of any site that really tries to do what you describe, thus I am not sure that they would even if there was "demand" / they would even know.
you could make such a store with the product catalog api.
The actual manifestations are affiliates who pair content with the products e.g a blog style product review with a product buy link in it. I have never seen a pure affiliate storefront focused on curation. You sometimes see curated lists in youtube reviews and videos.
If the selection is huge then they need to make recommendations to help people find products. I don't think many users will scroll through more than a page or two of options. The integrity of reviews makes a big impact here in how you are likely to make a choice on those first few pages.
3rd party sellers increase selection and the thought is that more selection creates a fly wheel effect that drives down prices which benefits the customer. Amazon has very limited control over 3rd party sellers but they need them to increase selection.
That said, if you go to any store there are typically a few different options in a product category with different price points and quality. Buyer beware applies in a physical store as much as at Amazon. It would be interesting to see how many consumers prefer less selection.
There is nothing stopping someone from creating a curated "quality" focused frontend that makes money on showing customers only high quality products and then making money on the affiliate referrals for the curation. If this was in high demand I think you'd see these curated stores in the wild. I've not seen one though and since I can use tools like fakespot to help determine the quality of the reviews.