WebMink

Amazon Is Parochial

I find Amazon something of a paradox. They have some very innovative thinking in their retail business, and I find the "associates" scheme very effective (I am now using their AStore to manage three of my interests lists, on photography, books and music). Yet they have an amazing blind spot when it comes to geography.

The problem is this; the Associates schemes for each country are distinct. They have stores in many different countries and they expect me to maintain totally separate accounts on each of them. I could live with that, but it gets worse. To earn credit for a sale delivered in a country, I have to have an account in that country and I have to use the unique ID for that country in the referral. To do that, I would have to know which country the reader resides in. Amazon provides no assistance in doing this. The result is that, in the case of AStore, I need to have completely separate stores for each country. I don't bother, the return on the effort isn't worth it since my primary motivation is actually having a simple CMS rather than driving revenue anyway.

How can such an advanced company have such a huge blind-spot when it comes to the international nature of the Internet? I have readers in every country where Amazon does business, and from one page I could be gathering attention for their products in all those countries. As it is, they pretty much force me to focus just on the readers in the UK and the US. How myopic and reactionary. Come on, Amazon, get with the Web on this one.
Labels: Amazon, Books, Music, website

posted at 1:56 PM (UK) | |

Comments:

Simon --

Let me start off by saying that I completely agree with you that having different geographies on different platforms with no cross-communication is not forward-thinking.

With that said, let me put this into perspective. Each Amazon retail organization in different geographies is truly separate from each other. Supplier relationships are different, warehouses are different, inventory quantities and even catalogs are different. So, as far as the retail organization is concerned, there is really no significant reason to have a common infrastructure.

Amazon Associates is different, as you pointed out. Web caters to an international audience and it would certainly be good to not have divergent Associates infrastructure. The problem is one of stack-ranking of projects. I think you would agree that a project with the world-wide impact, such as Amazon aStore, should be prioritized higher than redesigning the infrastructure where financial benefit may not be easily quantifiable.

There is not question in my mind that your suggestion is great; it's just that when real-word priorities and project complexities enter the equation, the correct decision is not necessarily a straight-forward one.

On a practical note, have you considered detecting the geography of the IP address hitting your site and dynamically substituting the correct Associates ID for that geography?

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates 2005-2006.

# posted by Gene Kavner : 6:43 PM

Many thanks for the rapid comment, Gene, much appreciated.

I wouldn't consider doing IP detection as you suggest, no. If I had a significant income riding on Amazon I might consider it, but frankly it's not worth my time. I use almost all off-the-shelf stuff for my web site and build static pages on a cheap host, and the reason I use Amazon at all is that it's all pre-built. AStore, for example, is to me an easy CMS that has the side effect of paying an unexpected bounty. In addition, since the ASINs might vary by geography I just a substitution of the associate code isn't enough. It's a task that I am not resourced to do and which Amazon is.

I get the point that Amazon's federation of companies are all different, and all have local laws to consider. But I am frankly amazed that Amazon Associates has now been in existence for half the age of the Web and still makes no concessions for the 'long tail' that comprises its users.

So while maybe I could do it if I knew how, Amazon should be doing that personalisation, especially on the new feature that is AStore - surely it should have been built in? Did you consider it or am I the first to suggest it? As you point out is has a high global priority for Amazon - shouldn't it also have a high global insight as well?

# posted by webmink : 6:59 PM

gene's comments are welcomely fast, but a long way off the mark, imho. its a legacy problem but its a very real one.

"as the retail organization is concerned, there is really no significant reason to have a common infrastructure." - other than customer benefits, gene.

the answer about discovering IP and dynamically substituting a store? thats a joke, right?

the structure is odd. take reviews. if i choose to buy something at amazon.co.uk then i might see 10 or 12 reviews for a particular product. the same product at amazon.com- 200 reviews. the amazon federated approach basically removes the wisdom of the crowds, and leaves you with the wisdom of the few... which is not so smart. then there is purchase of something someone links to. people link to an amazon.com source- then if i want to but i have to keep do some futzing around to locate the same work in my geography (sometimes amazon now puts a link to take you to your local store).

i think location needs to be an overlay, not a silo. right now - amazon can't take advantage of geographical metadata across its properties. deeply limiting that- note that maps are increasingly a primary interface for the web.

maybe i do only want reviews by brits. but it would be nice to have a choice, rather than researching at .com and buying at .co.uk.

# posted by james governor : 12:37 PM