alt Hacker News10 years ago I was working on this problem at Amazon. We were developing methods to normalize all the crap listings and methods 3ᴿᴰ party sellers used to get unique listings when consolidating them was known to drive down prices, which was the original goal.
I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within their own listings to satisfy both properties), but left before implementation rolled out. Based on current search results, either they failed or the project was abandoned.
I’m shocked at how some categories just contain junk from random brands with unpronounceable names. Want a music player by Sony or even RCA? Those brands have left that market completely for B2B products or are a licensed name on top of some garbage. Now you can get a Zaqe, Picxiul, Lwyinp, Globluum, or Swofy!
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talking to several of the catalog unification projects and doing promo reviews for people, it turns out it wasn't as easy to do as people thought. there's places it worked well (media) and others where it's a lot harder.
As I'm sure you know but some others might not, the random brands with unpronounceable names (as opposed to no specific names at all) are also a problem that Amazon has created: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/amazons-quiet-overhaul-of-the-t....
You'd think this trend would be obvious to product folks at Amazon unless they're living under a rock. And, you'd think they'd care about lowering conversion rates. I don't think name brand products will stop existing. In the long term, Amazon will lose out on business as people that can afford higher quality products will use Amazon less or just when they already know which brand/model they want to buy before hand.