All retailers do that. It's called private labels. None of the products are made by the retailer either. As unfortunate to those who might genuinely believe Trader Joes products are unique to them, or that Great Value was Walmart using its massive distribution systems to quickly scale core products like Milk out. It's all private labelling.

Amazon is not a traditional retails, it's a marketplace. Walmart buys stock, puts it on sale, gets data and makes decisions upon that. Amazon just skips the expensive first 2 steps by taking data from other retailers on their platform.

Is there a business with a "house brand" that doesn't do this?

Does Walmart/CostCo/BestBuy/Kroger/etc not do this exact thing?

I think the algorithms make the difference here. You can't really make a cereal box stand out on a physical shelf in any unique way (or you can, but it'll be a cost expense. Ruining the point of undercutting). IME with online storefronts for traditional brick and mortar their own brands never seem to come on top.

Meanwhle I will almost always get an AmazonBasics if it exists as a first result.

> Meanwhle I will almost always get an AmazonBasics if it exists as a first result.

99.9% of buyers prefer this over having to wade through innumerate random brands and try to discern quality.

Consumers like a lot of short term factors that turn against them in the long term. That seems to be the theme of the 21st century.

I'd rather these perverse incentives not exist and simply have a more educated consumer base learn to search "Amazon basics X" instead of maximizing conviniece to enable monopolies. We've clearly been shown that we can't handle the latter

I have no interest in becoming more educated about which seller from which factory run has what kind of quality standards. That’s why I use Costco and Target and Walmart and Amazon and Uniqlo and other brands to go out there and do that work. All I want to know is that I’ll be able to return something if it isn’t satisfactory.

And that's how you later get taken advantage of and how Amazon starts to be as bad as Comcast's customer service. But you can't leave because competition is gone.

You don't have to care per se, that's what the government is for. But taking the time and energy to argue against your long term best interests is disappointing.

I understand, but picking out random six letter brands on Amazon is not the competition most US customers are looking for.

It’s not feasible for people to go to China, inspect the manufacturing processes, and figure out what is worth what. There is a whole business there of purveying goods, which is what brands like Amazon and Kroger and Kirkland all the way up to LVMH.

With the advent of the internet, that business is no longer restricted to physical stores, so technically, anyone can make a superior product and sell direct to anyone. There were stories of Kmart and Walmart and whoever else bullying vendors because the vendors used to get nowhere without shelf space.

It doesn't really count when they:

1. Have access to immense amounts of data about these products that the manufacturers don't. Because they own the marketplace.

2. Can freely advertise, push, or even force their own products as much as possible. Because they own the marketplace.

how dare they use their algorithms to make sure all their cost effective versions will show up first.

That's probably the more pressing issue.

Those original sellers mainly just look like drop-shippers to me. So Amazon just going straight to the source and selling at lower margin is better for me as a buyer.