Ever since ancient times. The exact equation would be closer to a proportion or a complex algorithm, but if people knew a certain ceramic maker made good, durable teapots, they would go to that maker.

Online catalogs such as Amazon.com are a major source of revenue and streamline business for professionals and novice alike. The efficiency (or inefficiency) of their services come at a cost, however, at a whopping 8-15% commission rate. If they have access to any million or billion dollar industry, even a small sector, they would earn a tenth of the billions and millions. Unfortunately, a part of this revenue is diverted to product returns and customer service. But if Amazon is truly what it advertises itself to be, the commission sellers pay acts as insurance from troublesome transactions, and shields the buyer from losing their money.

The latest addition of allowing user edits of product listings have improved the Quality of Service by a factor. Many of the listings on Amazon are written with ambiguous information, empty advertising language, and poor grammar and spelling. eBay is in a worse condition, where all the product listings are eyesores and their sellers blowhards. But allowing both merchants to create their own full product descriptions and allowing buyers to edit certain details, . The way it works is that the merchant can create and edit only their own product listings. If they need to list under another category, they need to submit an update, which is reviewed by the Amazon board. I have been using the feature quite extensively myself: when I see a listing with a poor image, a poor title, and a poor description, I write my own. And when I need to sell products that already their own listing but give a poor impression of product, I create my own.

I am highly interested in how this system works out. Giving semi-full access to product information (unlike Wikipedia which has somewhat more full access) with a system of checks and balances really makes the site more enjoyable information-wise and cosmetically more pleasing. So to illustrate this system in a simple manner would be to visualize a triangle. there is Amazon on one side, merchants and customers on the other two sides. Power-wise, Amazon would have the final decision, then merchants, then customers. Merchants have the greatest leverage when creating information, however. Intelligent customers have the next most leverage, because lazy customers would not care about editing product information. Amazon has the least because it has to approve most of the information changes. But on another side, Amazon is able to create entire new product categories; Amazon manages the long-term growth of product information. The relationship between the three entities is quite complex, and it is difficult to calculate how much or how large each side of the triangle is as well as the transactions between different sides. Even more difficult, is to gauge the future of information shaping.

This analogy can be modified with discretion when applying to other business models.

I noticed that Amazon was not able to fit all items under a single category. Some products, such as backpacks and Bluetooth accessories, spanned several categories. This is a major setback to Aristotlean and scholastic taxonomy and dissection of knowledge. It seems that, many products can be useful for more than what they are listed for. The more useful a product is, often the more valuable it is. Okay, maybe not diamonds - that touches on aesthetics. Electronics are the only category that seem more specific-oriented, and thus their loss in value over time. However, there are plenty of modders and special interest engineers out there that are either interested in modifying the product to use on another product, or interested in studying the specimen for academic interest.

Duplicate listings are also a problem when the number of product copies are too large. I ran a search for a BlueAction Bluetooth headset and I received 100 results (they only have three varieties of Bluetooth headsets). Duplicate listings can heal inaccurate product reviews, offer an advantage to sellers who have a superior product listing, and reduce competition among sellers. However, the information asymmetry between consumer and seller is too great, resulting in fluctuations in price and efficiency.

Probably the greatest marketing invention, in the book industry, is not the creation of an ISBN but rather, the creation of “personalized recommendations” that vary depending on a user’s tastes. All I told Amazon was that I owned a few Chinese classics, some IT training manuals, and some political philosophy, and it returned back a wonderful wealth of potential knowledge.

But which books have the keenest insight and the best long term-profitability? Classics seem to reap more profit than any other book. Bestsellers often flare and burn out, often as quickly in a period of four seasons. A choice of publisher is also important, but it seems that once an author has chosen the right press, the author can keep rolling out new knowledge. Check out Donald A. Norman.

Statistically, Borders in Arcadia needs to restock on its Chinese literature and philosophy if it ever wants a few more million dollars over the next decades; the shelves are almost empty of Chinese classics and covered with New Age meditation and Indian and Tibetan Buddhist books; all that remains are a few tacky translations of the I-Jing and a book titled “Daoism for Dummies.”

What is the most efficient and profitable method of distributing information (books)? Should books be sold by merchants (bookstores), shipped from an online catalog or store, or sold as bits and bytes of information as an e-Book? Here:

http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=14107

http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=133616

Clearly, the traditional method generates more monetary velocity, as they say, when the book exchanges hands. Information wise, it would determine whether if the book is prized by the owner, or passed quickly after readings.

Also, the method of selling rare and collectible books has its own industry, and a markup on the price within a few years a book is out of publication reaps its own rewards. Books, unlike most technology, do not lose value over time when kept in good condition, and have over a +100% profit margin. Special editions of the book generate even more revenue. Although books are not copied by hand, imagine how much the Ma Wang Dui Daodejing texts or the Gutenberg Bibles are worth! Creating such a mechanism for efficient sales or lending would lead to a library, which could be a public library or a private corporation with an online catalog. All that is needed is a group of friends and a few bookshelves.

We are not only a seller, we are a leader in marketing products in creating trends for popular product categories, so that the community, the state, and the country can benefit from the precedent of certain product lines. The use and understanding of technology begins from youth. We wish to retain the optimism and energy of youth while gaining wisdom and experience in the field. Our team of employees reflect this. Our products are imported directly from factories in China and we will expand our range of selection to manufacturers in the United States, and elsewhere.

Efficiency is the number one priority. Although we specialize in international trade, our top customers will be local. We believe that serving the community and region is more important than shipping products elsewhere, to faraway states and countries. In the advent of global warming and the cost of oil, Merchants will need to be twice as keen when conducting sustainable commerce.

Long-term profitability is our next target, since having a broad customer base is power, but also a large responsibility. We believe that many top corporations are not concerned about the consumer individually and at large. We also believe that many corporate decisions, whether from the top executive or from a board of voters, were made at the expense of the consumer. In the coming decades we should have a transparent access to many company revenue records, so that shareholders will benefit from symmetrical information exchange.