Sure, but (at least as far as I can recall from my youth) Sears wasn’t coy about what they were doing. They’d happily tell you that (say) Kenmore was only at Sears.
It was even possible to frame this as a virtue for major appliances that might require repair one day. Even if you’d moved accross the country, you could call Sears and get connected to the Kenmore repair people.
Persistence and stability tied to a name is what a brand is, it’s what a brand is for. The wacky here-today-gone-tomorrow “store brands” from Amazon and (I’m sorry to say it) Aldi are arguably fundamentally counterfeit, in the way they attempt to cultivate an aura of persistence and stability without doing any of the work required to produce those virtues.
Listen, I’m not going to lie to you, those are all superior machines. But, if you like to watch your tv…and I mean really watch it, you want the Carnivàle.
It’s not an exact fit, but Fakespot is a good stand-in for spotting counterfeits or something that’s not worth your time. The site will analyze the veracity of reviews for any Amazon product you throw at it, and it does have a browser extension.
I was recently in the market for a high-quality monaural Bluetooth headset for phone calls, and trolled Amazon for options. A good third of the headsets I found were of questionable quality, with poorly-written ad copy and badly Photoshopped product images, and roughly 25% of those had immaculate reviews despite appearances. One option had a 4.9 star rating over 90 reviews, about which Fakespot stated 96% of submitted reviews were likely fake. (You’ll notice the review history for the item has since been deleted.)
All of which is just a long way of saying caveat emptor.
They pretty much do. I remember reading how $Noun and $Noun, specifically, is a marketing strategy that connotes “design” and “not-fake-at-all spunky young human fashion designers” and, oddly, “heritage”, especially if the “+” is an old-timey “&”. (See also the naming of fake English pubs and trendy Brooklyn restaurants.)
Although in later years, that was probably true of “Kenmore” as well, just a name that they could slap on top of whatever product that they could get a good price on from a wholesaler rather than something that was built, designed, or at least spec’d by Sears.
This isn’t just an amazon problem. It’s most obvious at Amazon because they are a huge marketplace, but follow any product kicstarter and you’ll find knockoffs trying to rush to market before they finish their design. Famously that explosion of “hoverboards” came from kickstarter knockoffs, and they were sold everywhere, not just Amazon.
Buy from reputable sellers with good customer service records, or Amazon itself, and return it if it seems at all suspect.
As for Amazon’s house brands, their “Amazon Basics” products in many cases are well-reviewed and sometimes fill nieches that no one else wants to - my current XL office chair is an AmazonBasics product because the selection of XL chairs from other vendors (or other stores) were abysmal or at 3x (or more!) the price of a normal chair, while Amazon had one for a little less than 2x the price of a non-XL chair, and, as the reviews said, it is built like a tank.
With few exceptions where the brand has shown itself to be of very high quality, I don’t care what brand I buy. I care that it’s reliable and will fulfill the need I have for it. If Amazon wants to make its’ own brands of stuff that are otherwise high quality and function well, then I really don’t see the problem with that any more than the existence of AmazonBasics is a problem.
I recently purchased a 6 port 60W usb charger on amazon. It really is extraordinarily useful. I don’t recognize the brand (not Swees).
But, this sort of thing scares me.
A brandname used to be a a foundation for trust, and customers could choose to trust–or distrust-- that brand based on previous experience, If a brand’s products simply reflect whatever cut rate third party factory was hired that month, then what good is a brand?
Later on, regulatory agencies supplemented, or even replaced this informal trust mechanism. But as BigClive notes, CE often means “Chinese Export”, not Conformité Européenne.
related to this but somewhat different was a problem i developed through amazon when i started ordering vibram 5-finger shoes. i started getting offers from dealer which had the shoes at a good price, so i ordered them and they never came. after a few weeks, i noticed that the number of reviews and comments for the seller had suddenly gone from 12-15 positive reviews to over 100 negative reviews all with the same problem i had, ordering and not getting the product. i managed to successfully complain to amazon about it but it took a few months to get my money back.
That’s fair. And I’ve certainly been happy with some of the Amazon Basics computer things I’ve got. By my impression is the majority of it, particularly in the technology side, is garbage.
I got tired of sometimes very expensive XL chairs breaking on me. The Amazon Basics one hasn’t failed yet. I mean, I freely admit I’m a heavy guy… but I’m not that heavy.
(Sorry, @Supercrisp… didn’t mean to reply to you. I think I accidentally clicked your name and then composed my post.)
You know that the situation has gone from excellent to downright peachy-keen when the platform operator moves towards a ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ attitude around the lemon market toward which they are plummeting.
