Amazon's new feature: data sharing! A powerful tool for sellers to select products and optimize advertising

Amazon recently announced a good news that it will launch an analysis of consumer shopping behavior in retail stores, and the relevant data will be synchronized with sellers!

The Store Analytics function will collect shopping data from Amazon's various offline stores, including Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh. When customers shop and browse in them, Store Analytics will record the products purchased and added to cart by these customers, and link them to the customer's portrait. On the one hand, this data will be used to help offline stores improve their product layout. On the other hand, the shopping data will be shared with Amazon advertisers, including third-party sellers, to help them better improve the effectiveness of their advertising groups.

According to the information disclosed so far, the first batch of sellers who will be open to use will be mainly brand sellers, who can learn how customers discover, consider and purchase products in the store. This information can help sellers set up their own advertising campaigns and provide real and effective data support. Through a specific store analysis dashboard, brand sellers can also access anonymous data summaries of various types of data on their own products, including rankings and performance, etc.

At the same time, because the offline store data involves the consumer's own information, Store Analytics will only share the non-personal information with the seller. If the buyer is unhappy with the collection of this information, he can cancel it at any time. After canceling it on the designated webpage of Amazon's official website, the offline store will no longer collect the customer's information.

Amazon has a lot of negative records regarding information security, including using surveillance cameras in delivery cars to illegally monitor drivers and using Amazon Ring smart doorbells to collect consumer information. These factors are likely to affect the accuracy of the new function.

Last year, Amazon began installing surveillance cameras on delivery vehicles to monitor drivers' behavior and even facial expressions. If the driver deviates from the scheduled route, or even scratches his nose or drinks water, the surveillance camera will capture it and issue an alarm.

Amazon officials also admitted that in some cases, they would share surveillance videos and other collected information with third-party organizations. Many drivers strongly protested against the camera monitoring system, believing that it seriously violated their privacy. Some drivers resigned in anger. Two waves of resignations also caused major delays in Amazon's delivery. At that time, the media and society were full of criticism, and Amazon finally shelved the plan.

Information collection is a double-edged sword. It can effectively improve sellers’ advertising and buyers’ shopping experience, but it is difficult to ensure that Amazon will not abuse this data. For example, Amazon uses sellers’ sales data to develop products and compete with sellers. Therefore, it is still questionable how much data this new feature can collect.

As we all know, the larger the sample size of this kind of data collection and analysis function, the more accurate it is. Offline data is not as good as online data, and its only advantage is that it is real and effective. Regarding this new function, I suggest that you treat it with caution and only use it as a reference for user consumption data. The latter function must be linked to display advertising. If it involves real money, you should do it within your means.