Correct product selection thinking can help us select good products and add points to the operation, while incorrect product selection thinking will lead to half the effort for the entire operation, or even a complete failure. Combined with many sellers’ failed product selection cases, common misunderstandings in product selection are summarized.
Blindly follow the trend to select hot-selling products on the platform. Many sellers see super hot-selling products such as Bluetooth headsets and mobile power banks, and dive in without fully considering the competition and evaluating their own strength. As a result, they encounter various problems such as fierce competition, many quality problems, low profit margins, high manufacturing costs, and attacks by competitors in operation, and eventually suffer losses. There are many such cases.
Be lazy and easy, and put the goods on the shelves on the consignment website with one click. Some sellers do not have suitable supply chain resources, so they choose to release products through the “one-click move” method of the consignment website. Occasionally, they find that there is no stock or the delivery time is too slow when placing an order, resulting in poor account performance and account restrictions.
Lack of market analysis and competitive product research, relying only on personal preferences and stubbornness. Although personal preferences need to be considered when selecting products, if the target market is not taken into consideration, the selected products may not meet the market demand due to differences in preferences, aesthetics, cultural barriers, and application scenarios between China and the West, resulting in product selection failure.
Blind pursuit of high quality leads to high costs and unsale of products. As mentioned in the previous article, high quality means high costs, and high costs mean fewer advantages, which may fail in operation.
Blind pursuit of differentiation leads to high operational risks. Some sellers excessively pursue differentiation when selecting products, such as exclusive private models, more functions, more gift combinations, excessive packaging, etc., which increases costs and causes heavy losses once the products cannot be sold.
Blind pursuit of products with large market capacity. Some sellers only see the market capacity, but ignore the competition situation and choose products with fierce competition and low profits controlled by large sellers, such as the “three lucky treasures” of mobile phone accessories (mobile phone cases, data cables, chargers, etc.). Once they are on the shelves, they continue to lose money.
Blind pursuit of super unpopular products. In order to avoid competition, some sellers choose super unpopular products with only a few search results. Although there is no competition, there is no market either.
Blindly pursue novel and unique products. The typical feature of novel and unique products is that consumers like them after seeing them, but have no concept in their minds. The characteristic of sales on the Amazon platform is keyword search. Consumers have no concept in their minds and cannot search for them, so the sales of such products will be very limited.
Infringement driven by fluke mentality. Some sellers choose products suspected of infringement with a fluke mentality, which results in account restrictions and other situations, which seriously affects the normal operation rhythm. Therefore, be sure to stay away from infringing products.
I hope that the misunderstandings in product selection listed above can provide a reference for sellers and help them avoid detours in operations.