E-commerce giant Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) recently made quite a few changes to its operations, likely in hopes of improving the company. However, investors weren’t exactly pleased with the changes, as Amazon was down fractionally in Friday afternoon’s trading.
One of the new changes features a shift in how Amazon treats third-party sellers. A newly-minted email invitation went out, and now, third-party sellers will be able to use Amazon’s own in-house delivery services. Previously, this was only available for Amazon’s marketplace and a few other sites. With Amazon now handling 23% of the United States’ entire parcel volume—FedEx (NYSE:FDX) handles 19%, UPS (NYSE:UPS) takes 24%, and the US Postal Service handles 32%—that’s a pretty wide and reliable network.
However, a less reliable change also kicked in. Amazon is testing a new rating system for products, which is making an already shaky system in terms of value even more so. The new system, based on reports from Engadget, shows a weighted average next to a single star, along with the percentage of five-star ratings received. This will apparently force users to pay closer attention to star ratings because, visually, they all look the same: one star with a number to follow.
Stars and shipping, though, don’t mean much to analysts here. With 40 Buy ratings and one Hold, Amazon stock is considered a Strong Buy by analyst consensus. Further, Amazon stock comes with a 30.84% upside potential thanks to its average price target of $174.13.
