Amazon is struggeling too with product information quality ...

... I am always very impressed by the product information and esp. by the quality of the product information Amazon does provide in their shop system.

But even Amazon seems to struggle from time to time with the data quality of their product information.

Look at the following screenshot which I have take today while I was shopping for  a landline phone.

For those of you who are not familiar with german here is how it should be written:

"Plug&Play AnrufbASINtworters:" -> "Plug&Play Anrufbeantworter:"

"Bedienung des AnrufbASINtworters:" -> "Bedienung des Anrufbeantworters:"

"AkkuladASINzeige:" -> "Akkuladeanzeige:"

"SignalstärkASINzeige:" -> "Signalstärkeanzeige:"

Got it?

Somebody has done a kind of global "Search&Replace" and has replaced "ean" by "ASIN". Actually EAN is the former name of the GTIN and ASIN is the name of the Amazon article number. Within Amazon you can convert the GTIN to the ASIN and vice versa.

So what does this example tell us:

1. Amazon does obviously not do any checks on the provided features. They obviously do not classify feature names as real attributes and they are obviously not trying to standardize those. You have also not product comparison in their shop.
   
2. Philips either has a manual process to provide their data to Amazon and in this process somebody manually did the global search&replace or they have an automated interface and a very bad testing process. Because then this has to go wrong in their interface implementation.

How could this situation be avoided?

1. Amazon could predefine all feature names and force all suppliers to deliver their data accordingly. I think this is not a feasible approach because Amazon would have to standardize all attributes on all product categories they have plus they would have to force all their suppliers to comply to that standard.
   Do you think Amazon could do this? I do not think so. Therefore I think Amazon can only rely on their suppliers that it is in their best interest to provide the best data quality they can.
2. Philips could use a PIM with defined attributes for the features of their products and implement an automated upload process to Amazon.
   I think this could be easily done and would solve the problem for Philips and Amazon.

Btw. although the data was corrupt I have ordered exactly that phone because I hope that Philips is way better in designing and producing phones than they are in providing product information to Amazon :-)