Amazing Amazon Patterns

On August 1, 2018, the article “ Amazon's Dark Patterns ” was published , not only is it transferable, and besides it contains very little factual data, in fact this article is the buyer's point of view, claiming to be relevant to IT, unless of course the tester (and Otherwise, you can also name the person who made purchases, tried to write reviews and went on to make global conclusions) - can be attributed to those.

I can not be silent, as a representative of the large Russian-speaking community of Amazon-sellers.

That is why, looking at the frontend, I also know that there is a backend, and it is extremely interesting, both in terms of IT, and in terms of big business.

So, my attention was primarily attracted by this screenshot.

image

In the last part of it there is a text circled in red (Item is currently only eligible for, Amazon Verified Purchase Reviews ...) and so, I will tell the background of why such prohibitions began to appear and what they really mean.

For a start, several sources:

An article on the Washington Post (by the way, the newspaper belongs to Bezos, the owner of Amazon).

Further service, one of several, is easily located on request fake reviews (https://www.fakespot.com/ or reviewmeta.com ).

As you can see, the problem of fake reviews has long been known, moreover, in serious publications and on TV, this was said more than once.

Naturally, Amazon itself, being a developer of artificial intelligence platforms (at the request of amazon artificial intelligence, you will find many interesting articles), more than half a year perfectly finds artificially created reviews and deletes them.

Moreover, there was a huge wave of deletions of reviews, very many sellers (working on the FBA model), the reviews were simply deleted completely.

Imagine the seller’s shock when he comes to the computer in the morning and sees that not a single one of 200 reviews is left, and sales have also sunk to zero.

Yes, for many years on Amazon there existed (and now exists) the vicious practice of drastically influencing feedback on sales, since at one time it was very easy to get feedback in exchange for distribution.

The buyer wrote about the following phrase in the recall: I am writing my honest review, I received this product, that is, it was allowed by Amazon and therefore a huge flow of sellers rushed (especially from Ukraine, Russia and other countries badly affected by the 2014 financial crisis).

Just a year later, “honest reviews” were banned and sellers had to create secret communities on Facebook, special resources were created where they could mass-distribute goods to customers and also hope for reviews.

I’ll omit the mechanisms of these distributions, since it can pull a very long article, something more interesting.

As a result, the whole situation has become so tense, the manipulations with the reviews have already gotten everyone, especially respectable Americans, that apparently the time has come for serious actions on the part of Amazon.

And it happened!

On many listings, Amazon not only erased reviews, but also put a ban on leaving new reviews, and not always according to a time criterion.

That is, on some listings, the ban lasts for more than a month, on some for two weeks, on some someone can leave feedback, and someone does not (the possibility of leaving a review depends on many of the buyer’s metrics).

You can write a fascinating detective story on this topic, since I have watched the moods and reactions of many hundreds of Amazon sellers (we communicate in special Facebook groups, we meet in person), after such innovations. Many cunning loopholes were also invented, including those based on the “holes” of the web interface in Amazon, for leaving feedback, but the struggle continues with mixed success.

The most important thing that follows from this is that Amazon maneuvers between two necessities:

  1. The need to still clean up your site from fake reviews, no matter how cool it is an honest business and all the accents are put on it.
  2. If big brands or sellers with a history have successfully traded for several years, and the total number of purchased reviews is no more than 30-50%, and most importantly, this number roughly correlates with real organic reviews, then it’s more profitable to just close your eyes, from the point of view big business and in terms of Big Data. I hope you understand me.

Returning now to the beginning of the article, a screenshot circled in red means simply that this listing is suspicious, Amazon knows that it is manipulating reviews, and this is a ban on leaving reviews from this point of view! It always comes to the seller a letter with something like this: You are suspected of manipulating reviews, now your listing is banned from leaving reviews and other letters (I will not quote the original of such letters).

Therefore, blaming Amazon is that it contributes to fake reviews, at least unprofessionally.

If you are interested in what else happens in the internal kitchen when interacting with the Amazon buyer, write, tell. For a couple of years have accumulated several very interesting stories.
And all this in terms of high technology and the manifestation of artificial intelligence.

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