Amazon.com Inc. shoppers are used to seeing the #1 Best Seller icons for some products. Aside from the reviews and ratings that the products earn, it is a way to convey that the product is popular and much sought after. As such, the users tend to buy these products. However, Bloomberg News reports that some merchants manipulate the Best Seller Badge, whereas these products are not best sellers.
Amazon Bestseller Badge Devious Scheme and Products
Some dishonest and devious merchants have been found to put some popular products in the slow-selling item category to trick Amazon algorithms by making it believe that the products fall in the hot-selling category more than they are in. The scam revealed by Bloomberg includes items like phone cases, car dashboard mounts, and USB drives.
The devious scheme was better understood when a mount appeared in the “replacement axle shafts” product category. This item was found to be escalating to the bestselling status since more buyers are opting for phone mounts in comparison to car axles.
It is still not clear the type of products that might be included in the scheme. However, vendors adversely impacted are losing out on huge amounts of money, amounting to thousands of dollars in some instances. These vendors want Amazon to stop the devious activities before it becomes rampant. During this holiday season, shoppers in the United States are anticipated to incur as much as $120 billion in online shopping.
How do Unscrupulous Merchants Make Money?
The unscrupulous vendors become gainers by fostering their sales, and it has been seen that the sale can jump by as much as 50% by applying the best seller badge dishonestly. This was revealed by the co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, Lesley Hensell, who is responsible for advising Amazon sellers. Most of the time, the customers are hoodwinked and will not notice the deviation until the products do not turn out to be junk.
The loss-making proposition adversely impacts the sellers that adhere to the rules, and they suffer because their products are deviously pushed down lower in the search results, making it improbable for the prospective buyers to even notice them.
One spokesperson of Amazon.com Inc revealed that machine learning is used to detect and identify those products that are incorrectly placed in the product categories. Aside from the same, the reviews obtained manually are also considered when required.
Sellers placing the product in the wrong categories are warned, and those that repeat the error face suspension from selling their products on this e-commerce platform. As far as the #1 Best Seller rating is concerned, it is usually updated every hour based on the sales, as revealed by the spokesperson.
