About two weeks ago, Amazon gave the non-magnetic Wera Rapidaptor bit holder their “Amazon’s Choice” badge. I found this to be strange for two reasons. First, the magnetic version, 889/4/1 K, has more reviews and has a lower price. If you didn’t specifically care about whether it was magnetic or not, which would you choose?
Wera’s Rapidaptor bit holders have locking mechanism, and so the magnetic aspect is more for easier fastener starting than bit retention.
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So who exactly is buying the more expensive and less reviewed non-magnetic bit holder to earn it an Amazon’s Choice badge?
Today, a similar search results in sponsored listings for Makita, a “Best Seller” badge for a Bosch bit holder, and the Amazon’s Choice badge goes to the magnetic bit holder.
There has been lots of controversy and confusion surrounding how Amazon chooses which products receive their Amazon’s Choice labeling, with many pushing for greater transparency.
I can’t even guess as to what could have happened here. Maybe someone placed a bulk order for the non-magnetic bit holder, boosting whatever score the algorithm looks at to determine which products to give an Amazon’s Choice label to? Who knows.
I find it interesting to examine these peculiarities, and hopefully you feel the same way.
And if you’re looking to buy a locking bit holder, I really love Wera’s Rapidaptor. I purchased mine more than 10 years ago now, and it’s still going strong, although I tend to only use it for non-impact and hand tool use. It holds bits securely and makes bit insertion and removal a cinch.
fred says
As you allude – maybe the “how and why” is known only by the Amazon programmer responsible for developing and updating the algorithm that assigns the “Amazon Choice moniker. It would seem logical to compare weighted prices – using the algebraic sum of the customer reviews as the weighting factor. But maybe they further weight things by the number of reviews and/or some other things like the number of pieces in stock, their profit margin at the set price etc.
You and I have noticed that sometimes Amazon seems to slash prices on some items when they have only 1 left in stock. Presumably that’s done by algorithm as well.
Frank D says
Something tells me that Bosch bit will be in my cart soon 🙂
Bill C. says
Amazon uses their “Amazon Choice” badge for the same reason restaurants mark items as “featured” or “Chef’s favorite” on the menu: to move higher margin merchandise. I think this practice started about five minutes after shop keepers started plying their trade.
Garrick says
Amazon is a private company. Private companies are in existence to make money… also known as profit. Profit equals sales minus costs. The greater the difference between the cost and the price the better business choice it is. Hence “Amazon’s Choice”.
Not to say that Amazon does not have any other considerations to factor in such as consumer loyalty, so the product must at least be tolerable to the buyer, and not so far priced out of line with the competition that consumers distrust them. Or can’t be bothered to learn how to.
trippy says
Having had a Amazon store for 15 years. Until this past January. Amazon is all about algorithm’s, that is until a human steps in to the benefit of Amazon. When you need relief from Amazon over what those algorithm’s have done. Impossible.
Pablo says
Amazon sales make up a small piece of the pie where I work <10% but give us 70% of the problems. The reasoning behind Amazon's Choice has got to be profit margin combined with availably of product because we've had an item get the guilding that was a crappy product compared to the competition, but the markup is decent on their end and we always have a huge stock for our value driven industrial customers. Don't get me started on the returns….