[cc438]

I think the consumer can only gain from such entries into the market. AmazonBasic products are often just a standardization of a simple product in a market with too many options. Consumers trust Amazon to deliver on their promises and when confronted with a choice between 800+ USB hubs, I'll choose the cheapest option that is guaranteed to work. There is almost 0 utility for the consumer in choosing a "better" USB hub than AmazonBasic's offering but the downside of choosing a "no-name" hub is measurably significant.

The genius in AmazonBasic concept was in realizing that building the better mousetrap doesn't always mean building the best mousetrap, it means building the best mousetrap for the price. There are so many goods with a market that falls into just two categories, ones that work and ones that don't. Whichever brand is able to gain consumers trust in knowing their offering will work will quickly rise to dominate such a market.

[r00fus]

It's like the Walmart-ization of main street - except in the digital realm. Great for cost-cutting consumers today, bad in the long run.

Personally for the product pictured - the Amazon version is gaudy - I don't want to see more AMZN branding on my stuff.

[escherize]

I'm curious how you know what's good for consumers more than they do. Would you mind explaining why it's bad for cost-cutting consumers in the long run?

Seems like amazon is content to run razor thin margins, and if they jack up the price after competitors go out of business, that move would recreate a market for item X and burn some Amazon good will.

I also find the Amazon branding on that laptop stand to be really tacky, though!

[r00fus]

Ostensibly this kind of obvious copying is the sort of thing that design patents are supposed to thwart.

Re: why - It's really basic monopoly theory - squeeze out competition, then raise prices. Are you certain that Amazon will always be content to run razor thin margins? At some point Amazon will have subsumed the buying habits of the consumers long after Rain is dead and buried. Will someone new really come along?

[falcolas]

I have one of these at work (and my colleague one of the name brand articles) - you don't see the branding on either one 99% of the time, because your laptop is covering it.

Ultimately, it is just a laptop stand, and it's a quality one. I'm just surprised that it took Amazon to come up with a lower priced competitor - I've been looking for something that wasn't $50 for a long time. All of its competitors other than Amazon are overpriced, flimsy pieces of plastic.

[sdrothrock]

There's also a certain amount of acknowledgement that you're not going to get the best or perfect product for the price that you pay Amazon, but you will get better service (that is, replacement/refund) than you're likely to get from TJ's Wholesale Emporium or a random individual seller on Amazon.