Wireless earbuds on four Amazons: Japan rates about half a star lower, Mexico shows the biggest discounts

Search results from amazon.com, amazon.com.mx, amazon.com.br and amazon.co.jp on 23 Oct 2026. 151 products. Method, code and CSV at the end.

The short version

• Ratings are not comparable across countries. The median star rating of the first results was 4.0 in Japan, against 4.4 in the US, 4.5 in Mexico and 4.55 in Brazil. In Japan 19 of 40 results were under 4.0 stars. In the US, 0 of 31.
• Mexico leans hardest on "was" prices. 36 of 40 results (90%) showed a list price, with a median 39% off. In Japan, 17 of 40 (42.5%) showed one, with a median 19% off.
• Review counts differ by an order of magnitude. The median product had 5,301 ratings in the US and about 570 in Japan and Brazil.
• Brazil and Japan have the most thinly reviewed products. 13 of 40 results in Brazil and 9 of 40 in Japan had fewer than 100 ratings.

What we looked at

One search per marketplace, in the local language, for wireless earbuds: "wireless earbuds" (US), "audífonos inalámbricos" (Mexico), "fones de ouvido bluetooth" (Brazil) and "ワイヤレスイヤホン" (Japan). We kept the first results of each search: 31 in the US, 40 in each of the other three.

For every product we collected the price, list price, star rating and number of ratings, all as numbers.

What we found

1. A product that is "good" depends on the country

	US	Mexico	Brazil	Japan
Median stars	4.4	4.5	4.55	4.0
Rated 4.5 or more	11 / 31	26 / 40	23 / 38	2 / 40
Rated under 4.0	0 / 31	1 / 40	3 / 38	19 / 40

Brazil: two results had no rating yet.

The gap is large and the data can't say why. Different rating habits between countries, a different product mix in each search, and the language of the query could all play a part. What it does say: if you compare products or sellers across Amazon marketplaces, a 4.2 in Japan and a 4.6 in Mexico may mean the same thing.

2. How much reviewing a product gets

	US	Mexico	Brazil	Japan
Median number of ratings	5,301	2,456	579	567
Results with 10,000+ ratings	13 / 31	12 / 40	4 / 40	2 / 40
Results with under 100 ratings	6 / 31	4 / 40	13 / 40	9 / 40

3. List prices and discounts

	US	Mexico	Brazil	Japan
Results showing a list price	21 / 31	36 / 40	29 / 40	17 / 40
Median discount vs list price	37.5%	39.2%	23.7%	18.9%

The "discount" is relative to the list price Amazon displays, which is not necessarily a price the product was ever sold at.

4. Price spread inside each market

Prices are in local currencies, so we compare the spread, not the amounts: the 90th percentile price divided by the 10th.

	US	Mexico	Brazil	Japan
Median price	$23.98	MX$488.99	R$73.11	¥4,055
90th ÷ 10th percentile price	7.1×	10.1×	9.2×	5.7×

Mexico and Brazil have the widest range from cheap to premium in the first results. Japan's is the narrowest.

What you can do with this

• Sellers expanding to a new marketplace: benchmark your rating against that market's median, not your home market's.
• Price and promotion analysts: track the share of results with a list price and the median discount over time.
• Brand and category managers: see how crowded the "thin reviews" long tail is in each country.
• Anyone building a cross-market comparison: normalize ratings per marketplace before ranking.

Limits

• Small sample: about 40 results, one keyword per country, one day. It shows where to look, not a statistically representative measure of Amazon.
• Different queries, different products. The same product category, searched in four languages, doesn't return the same items.
• Search order is Amazon's own. We kept results in the order Amazon returned them, with no manual filtering.
• United States: the run returned 31 results, not 40.
• Sponsored placements are not analyzed here.

Reproduce it

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<APIFY_TOKEN>")
markets = {
    "amazon.com":    "wireless earbuds",
    "amazon.com.mx": "audífonos inalámbricos",
    "amazon.com.br": "fones de ouvido bluetooth",
    "amazon.co.jp":  "ワイヤレスイヤホン",
}
for marketplace, term in markets.items():
    run = client.actor("sondalabs/amazon-scraper").call(run_input={
        "mode": "search",
        "searchTerms": [term],
        "marketplace": marketplace,
        "maxItemsPerStart": 40,
        "maxItems": 40,
    })
    items = [i for i in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items()
             if i.get("type") == "product"]
    stars = sorted(i["stars"] for i in items if i.get("stars"))
    print(marketplace, len(items), "median stars:", stars[len(stars) // 2])

The four runs returned 151 products and cost about $0.25 in total. The raw data is in the CSV that goes with this article.

The scraper reads public pages only. It does not sign in and does not solve CAPTCHAs. Check Amazon's terms and the law in your country before using data like this commercially.

Disclosure: I build the Amazon Scraper used here. You can check every number with the code above.