
What does it mean when a product is “Amazon’s Choice”? - danso
https://www.wired.com/story/what-does-amazons-choice-mean/
======
blairanderson
Our data shows "Amazon Choice" is essentially a join table between product and
search keywords, ordered by a multiplier of conversions, ratings, and
availability.

\- Customers are happy when they get stuff fast - it needs to be available
right now, and in the buy box

\- Higher rated items are theoretically better than lower rated items

\- "choice" badge is keyword specific: a plant light could be choice for "grow
light bulb" and "grow light led" but not for "light bulb".

Our data shows the items are not correlated by margins for. We often see
negative NET PPM on "choice" items.

Source: I run an Amazon consultancy that manages roughly $30M/year sold
through Amazon.

~~~
zippergz
So this would largely imply that Amazon's Choice truly is about giving
customers the best experience (to the extent possible given the quality of
keyword and review data)?

~~~
losteric
Basically, labeling products the customer is most likely to purchase.

but, pessimistically or realistically, I expect they are also training
customers to blindly trust the black box and eventually the criteria will
change towards maximizing short-term value.

~~~
nextos
Yes, also in my experience "Amazon's Choice" does _not_ protect you from
counterfeit, grey market or any other crap items.

I wrote to jeff (at) amazon (dot) com last week about this, because I got
super upset. And some middle manager replied. I shipped US -> UK some
underwear from a company that uses no latex (I'm allergic), sends items inside
a ziplocked sealed bag and prohibits underwear returns (for hygiene reasons).

After waiting for the parcel for 2 days at home, as I was in a hurry to get
more latex free underwear, I got an Amazon envelope and the underwear came
inside without any packaging and _clearly_ used (!). I was furious.

Not an isolated event. A few weeks ago, I ordered a shower with a chlorine
filter from Amazon UK. I know this korean brand very well. Again, I got the
item without any original packaging, and water inside (!).

So I don't trust Amazon anymore for items that are more than $10. People abuse
the return policy, and Amazon does not care. Or it's even their business
model: Ship it again, selling it as new. Online shopping is getting very
tricky.

I'd gladly pay more at places that guarantee brand new items. Things are
getting really scammy. Around 1/5 of the items I buy online have been opened
and used, or have some defects. And I'm talking about expensive stuff and
supposedly reputable sellers.

~~~
oasisbob
For months, the Amazon's Choice for "climbing carabiner" was a carabiner which
wasn't even rated or appropriate for climbing.

Looking now, I'm surprised to see they've actually fixed it and have chosen
something appropriate. [1]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Black-Diamond-Positron-Screwgate-
Pack...](https://www.amazon.com/Black-Diamond-Positron-Screwgate-
Pack/dp/B01DWBLZ98/)

~~~
cm2187
I use amazon as much as I can, but I would never trust their supply chain with
my life or my health. I don't think I would ever buy such an item on their
website, nor anything I would apply to my skin or ingest. Even if they
displayed a model suitable for climbing, how would you know it is guenine?

The counterfeit problem is real. Like half of their intel 10gbe NIC are
counterfeit (I know because a Synology NAS will only work with a guenine
model).

~~~
oasisbob
Agreed. Amazon has lost my trust here. But, that being said...

With climbing gear, it seems to be less about counterfeits, and more about
shady manufacturers / knockoffs with illegitimate safety certifications.

Hot forging takes a lot of work and tooling. I'm not sure there's ever been
true counterfeit climbing hardware in the wild.

------
pkaye
Recently when we were deciding among a couple vitamins to buy on Amazon we
noticed that the "Amazon's Choice" label got moved from one product to another
during a screen refresh. We thought that was strange and were curious how they
determining the labeling.

~~~
blairanderson
i would be interested in seeing that, because I do consulting for suppliers
selling to Amazon and rarely see flucuations like that on badges.

~~~
IAmGarrett
I sell a product on Amazon and have seen it be AC one day, not the next day,
and then two days later, back to AC. Return rate and star rating were constant
throughout the period, so I'm at a loss for how this "choice" is bestowed.

~~~
privateSFacct
A factor may be availability and not wanting to overload a choice.

Let's say you are way down in list, and pop up to be the Amazon Choice. That
drives real sales increases. They might look at how many in warehouse local to
you. Persons A, B, C put in cart - they slow rate at which AC shows up until
they get a sense of whether all those will become sales or some will expire
from cart etc.

Amazon has some places that feel like they have softer consistency guarantees.
Ie, something shows up, but with some time passing things like price might
change even while in your cart etc.

------
duxup
Those things remind me of when I'm at a home hardware store.

They'll have a sale on say multi bit screwdrivers on the end cap. It will look
like a fancy screwdriver that is on sale with lots of features and bits.

Inevitably if I by these ... they suck and are actually expensive for the
quality and often have "features" that get in the way (some sort of fancy
grip, more bits).

If I go down the isle I'll find for far less a simple multi bit screwdriver
that is both cheaper, and higher quality.

Accordingly I never trust these signs / actually avoid them as the same rule
apply to cooking tools and so many other things.

~~~
asr
Manufacturers often pay stores for space on the end cap.
[http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/retail/raleys.php](http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/retail/raleys.php)

As far as I know, "Amazon's choice" is not an advertisement/suppliers can't
bid to be Amazon's choice.

~~~
ceejayoz
Not directly, but if it's based on things like purchase volume and reviews, it
can certainly be gamed by paid actors.

------
ohnope
If I were an evil decision maker at Amazon, I would have the algorithm pick
products that are well rated with low return rate, but have high inventory
that doesn't clear fast enough. Easy way to free up space in the warehouse.
Because why call out actual crowd favorites if they are already "organically"
selling well?

~~~
kdmccormick
My friend works at a liquor store. His boss one day told him to label the
poorly-selling wines as "Staff Picks". So your fear isn't exactly unfounded :P

~~~
calbear81
I guess that isn't wrong, your boss is part of the staff and they have
"picked" the poorly selling wines to highlight. It didn't say "Staff
Recommended" or "Staff Favorites"

~~~
kdmccormick
I think the average shopper would interpret "Staff Picks" as meaning "wine
that the staff recommends" instead of "wine the store is hoping to sell." It's
disingenuous at best.

For the record, my friend initially refused, and then compromised by labeling
them "[Manager name]'s Picks".

~~~
calbear81
I was being facetious. It definitely is extremely misleading based on any
common understanding of what a “pick” implies in terms of quality or
attributes of a product.

------
residentfoam
I look _only_ at the negative reviews. You can trust them to highlight the
weak points of a product. So I know at least what would be the "worst" case
scenario and if that works for me I buy it.

~~~
flavor8
Unfortunately they're not safe either. Competitors in a niche will hire sock
puppet accounts to negative review each other.

~~~
chx
This is why I always look at the two star reviews :) One star reviews are too
often indeed sockpuppetery, PEBKAC and such.

~~~
soulofmischief
If you want to actually be clever then the only option is to sample _all_ of
the information available.

Limiting oneself to a subset of information is not how one makes an informed
decision.

~~~
rurp
Reading every possible review of a product I'm considering sounds far less
clever than a simple heuristic to me.

~~~
soulofmischief
Pay attention to my words. I said to _sample_ all of the data.

I didn't say anything about reading every possible review. But you _do_ need a
good, rounded sample.

------
Pxtl
It bothers me because the term pretty strongly implies that a "choice"
involves a human doing the choosing. When I first saw it, I'd hoped it was a
sign that Amazon was going to be investing time in curating their junkyard
swapmeet of a store. Not so much.

------
larkinrichards
I think an interesting point to keep an eye on is recommendations with
negative side effects, e.g. amazons choice for a high security lock has a
terrible flaw. [https://youtu.be/kJ1_P5oqf6Y](https://youtu.be/kJ1_P5oqf6Y)

------
neom
Lockpick lawyer (not embarrassed to say my fav youtube channel) has some
choice words for amazon choice locks:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ/sea...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ/search?query=amazon+choice)

~~~
Theodores
This is a good example as it really does lay the Amazon gig bare. LPL knows
his stuff but, for customer recommendations, do you really need LPL level
product knowledge?

Nope.

I have sold locks as just one of thousands of products in the bicycle trade
and you don't need to sell that many to know what you should be recommending
to customers. It is not difficult. You don't have to pick/angle-grind them,
you just need to listen to the customers.

There is a forest of locks out there, all different for slightly different use
cases and customers do need a little bit of advice to get the right one. It is
one of those situations where you can have two out of three of these things:
security, a nice price or a manageable weight.

There is unwritten moral obligation to provide some customer service, as a
shop assistant it would be pathologically wrong to sell someone a lock that is
not suited for their use case. The same goes for any other product.

Sure there may be times when you might try your hardest to shift inventory,
e.g. the models with last year's packaging that have got a bit dusty, or the
ones that are over-abundant in the warehouse. But you can do that responsibly
so the customer knows what the deal is.

In normal retail with a finite amount of shelf space you do not have sub-
standard clone products taking up tonnes of space with little product
differentiation. It makes no sense to sell these products as the profit from
the sale is nowhere near as good as what you get selling a legitimate product.
Besides, how on earth are the customers supposed to choose when the options
are mind-boggling?

With the LPL Amazon locks series it seems clear to me that Amazon are selling
highly branded products that are useless as 'choice' as well as off-brand junk
as 'choice'. If a regular shop assistant was doing what they were doing then
you would wonder whether they were trying to destroy the company!

In regular retail if you realise that some locks are sub-standard then you get
the customers coming back with some horror story about how their shed was
raided. Or they come in with the remains of what the thieves left behind.
After profuse apologies they are cool about it, they have insurance and you
help them get what they need. You then decide not to stock the offending locks
again or to sell them only to people who are okay with the compromise.

Amazon just do not have this type of a feedback loop, they are not trimming
down their range to only offer the customer the good stuff. They just don't
get this aspect of customer service even though they excel in other areas.

------
wtracy
> Searching for “Goyard,” a French company whose bags usually retail for
> thousands of dollars, often displays a $25 knockoff as Amazon’s Choice.

Wow, this sounds like lawsuit material.

It's one thing to unwittingly carry counterfeit products. It's another thing
entirely to actually endorse one.

------
tzs
Some of them are very specific. For example, the eufy RoboVac 11S is currently
"Amazon's Choice" for "eufy robovac 11s".

~~~
occamschainsaw
This could be useful when there are multiple sellers of the same product.

------
oceanghost
I have seen some really questionable products recommended by "Amazon's
Choice." I have assumed that in addition to customer input, the choice is
probably working against me (recommending things with higher margins, items
that Amazon needs to get rid of, or kickbacks themselves).

------
PcMojo
I bought my parents some outdoor pathway solar lights marketed as "Amazon's
Choice" that turned out to be cheap garbage. Their first set that they bought
decades ago lasted over 10 years. Then next two sets they bought fizzled out
in 2 years or so. With solar, battery & led technology moving forward
exponentially I figured it would be easy to find nice solar lights for a good
price. I set out to buy a decent set of lights for them & didn't mind paying a
little more for some quality lights. I couldn't decide between a few models &
Amazon kept recommending their "Amazon's Choice" that didn't list as many
technical specifications as the ones I was considering. Time marched on & I
needed to make a decision & decided to trust Amazon with their choice. I
figured that their AI would know I analyze many of my purchases extensively &
pay extra for quality, so I assumed that info would probably be in my account
profile. (yeah I remember the old saying too!) I was never so embarrassed to
give somebody a gift then when I gave the "Amazon's Choice" solar light set to
my parents. Some didn't work at all right out of the box. Within 6 months only
two worked. They were dim, really cheap (stakes broke) & were that annoying
artificial light spectrum. I don't buy much from Amazon anymore for this &
other reasons, but when I do, if it says "Amazon's Choice" it doesn't
encourage me to buy, it discourages me from making a purchase.

------
calf
It's so people don't have to choose so Amazon is literally choosing for you.

I've picked Amazon's Choice a couple times because I gave up trying to
research what would actually be the right product for me.

------
Finnucane
In Ye Olde Dayes, these sorts of promotional considerations were paid for by
the manufacturer. When Amazon was still mainly selling books, 'coop' funds
paid for favorable placement on the intro pages for genre sections (the same
way bookstores arrange endcaps and window displays).

But it sounds like this has been replaced with a system that doesn't require
any sort of human input.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> But it sounds like this has been replaced with a system that doesn't require
> any sort of human input.

They should rename it "Our Insane Algorithm's Choice."

------
zwieback
I don't know but I gravitate toward them and haven't regretted it yet.

------
sytelus
TLDR; looks like none of what I thought "Amazon Choice" meant is true. This is
what I thought: (1) they had verified seller through some background checks,
(2) made sure the seller was selling genuine brands/product, and (3) the
product was the best selling among such verified products.

------
tzs
Amazon is just a mess. Search for "apple watch charger cable". Among the
results is one "Amazon's Choice", this one by ATETION [1], sold by ZDAGO and
fulfilled by Amazon, with Prime shipping. Amazingly, all the reviews in the
listing seem to actually be reviews for an Apple watch charger cable, which is
a rarity for that category. Almost every other third party cable listing is
rife with reviews and questions for other products.

So, in this case, the "Amazon's Choice" label seems to be very useful--it is
marking pretty much the only third party Apple watch charger cable on Amazon
that doesn't show obvious signs of being sold be a scammer.

However, if like me before you go look at the search results you go over to
the side and check the "Prime" box to refine the search to just listings with
Prime shipping, the "Amazon's Choice" ATETION listing from ZDAGO goes away!
This makes no sense.

The results still do contain what appears to be the same ATETION cable (at
least the specs are the same) [2], except now it is sold be WEIZY and
fulfilled by Amazon, and is not an "Amazon's Choice", and is slightly cheaper.
The WEIZY listing is a cesspool, like pretty much everything else in the
category except the ZDAGO listing. It's full of questions and reviews that
have nothing to do with the charger cable.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/ATETION-Charger-iWatch-Magnetic-
Charg...](https://www.amazon.com/ATETION-Charger-iWatch-Magnetic-
Charging/dp/B07NWC3SX1)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/ATETION-Charger-iWatch-Magnetic-
Charg...](https://www.amazon.com/ATETION-Charger-iWatch-Magnetic-
Charging/dp/B07PQ1RNYG)

------
kkarakk
Sounds like their algo has reached youtube recommender/ranking algo level of
"we don't know what the black box does, we just try to fix it when it fucks
up"

------
bitL
Cynic in me: it means a similar product is soon going to be offered as Amazon
Basics, i.e. grab the original while you still can.

~~~
sutterbomb
Almost definitely not the case. My product had the badge for awhile and our
whole category is too small to warrant Amazon’s attention.

------
ptah
tldr: "we don't know either"

------
mttyng
TL;DR: “How does Amazon choose its choices? Do humans have a hand in the
decisions, or are they governed by an algorithm? The company won’t say.”

...followed by theories.

~~~
danso
That the company won't say that it's hand-curated, with the observations that
the article makes, seems to suggest that automation is being used to some
degree. Which wasn't obvious to me as a customer.

~~~
OJFord
I always assumed it was just a top seller for rough search term (i.e.
algorithmic, but simplistic).

~~~
gowld
Yes, it's the #1 search term by their algorithm, with some badging to
psyochologically nudge you toward confidence to buy. It's conceptually no
different from a floor salesman telling you that whatever item you are
currently looking at is the best choice.

It's similar to how almost every Amazon product is a "best seller" in an
extremely narrow category.

------
pbhjpbhj
Presumably it's like any other store, products with slight defects ("it was on
offer, not worth returning"), excess products taking up warehouse space, old
versions, highest profit item in a class, paid promotions.

Why would Amazon do it differently, they clearly don't care about product
quality; how else would they use the badge?

~~~
wyldfire
> Presumably it's like any other store, products with slight defects

What you are describing sounds like "clearance" which is a pretty upfront
designation (this didn't sell very well, it's here at a discount before we
chuck it).

But I think the message that "Amazon's Choice" is intended to convey is "this
product meets certain quality and value standards and is unlikely to
disappoint you."

Of course, in practice, they could apply it in order to clear inventory. But
with FBA, the inventory carrying cost isn't primarily theirs.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
No, clearance is different. At least in UK stores that's marked down from the
shelf price.

Example, Battenburg cake, when it's on promotion it always has one of:
mismatches (not quite square), loose seams, cake edges (crust that's darker
coloured, not burnt), too much jam. It's not old, but without the promotion it
would probably end up in clearance because people are more choosy with "full
price".

Similarly in restaurants, the waiter will recommend food that's not inferior,
but would become so if it's not sold. Or to use a product their supplier
discounted.

Managers special might be "we got excess inventory at our central warehouse
and I get a bonus if we shift more of these, which are perfectly good
product".

Et cetera.

