pstarr wrote:Cog wrote:To answer your question pstarr. I think Amazon is stupid by doing brick and mortar just as you alluded to. But its irrelevant of what makes sense. All that matter is stock price.
All that matters is stock prices? No, it includes your analysis of fundementals to judge movement. Or do you play the market like you tweet . . . 144 character sound bites. lol
Amazon is perfecting a different kind of business model than we’ve traditionally known. First, crush an industry by focusing on growth instead of profit. Then, swoop in to “fix” the industry that was destroyed. Now that the online retailer is moving into the brick and mortar world, it’s trying to prevent the in-store price comparisons that have served it so well against competitors.
Following the announcement of Amazon’s massive bid to buy the Whole Foods grocery chain, the Washington Post reports that the company has patented an algorithm that’s designed to discourage “mobile window shopping.” Customers’ habit of visiting stores like Borders and checking the Amazon prices while they browse is understood to have played a major factor in Amazon’s competitive victories over the last decade, so it’s beginning to take measures to ensure that it doesn’t suffer the same fate.
The algorithm isn’t going to prevent a dedicated customer from checking out other retailers on their phones... for now. All it does is make it more difficult for any shoppers who are on the store’s wifi. The “Physical Store Online Shopping Control” patent analyzes the mobile browsing of the customer and if it determines that they are visiting a competitor’s website it will redirect them in one of a few ways. From the report:It may block access to the competitor’s site, preventing customers from viewing comparable products from rivals. It might redirect the customer to Amazon’s own site or to other, Amazon-approved sites. It might notify an Amazon salesperson to approach the customer. Or it might send the customer’s smartphone a text message, coupon or other information designed to lure the person back into Amazon’s orbit.
Amazon is gradually pulling everyone deeper into its eco-system and playing around with throttling customer’s mobile browsing is not the greatest omen.
Amazon’s attempt to enter the smartphone market hasn’t really had much of an impact yet, but imagine if it had. Imagine if it does. Imagine the retailer building some sort of system that has control over your phone while you shop in any of its stores
pstarr wrote:12 dozen bottles of wine? Or is that cases? Whoohoo
I buy vino at winedotcom. Free shipping whoohoo
KaiserJeep wrote:Oddly enough, the main impact of this acquisition may be on the petroleum industry.
Profits in the food industry are razor-thin as it were, the reason that Whole Foods had suffered losses in recent years had nothing to do with concept or advertizing or marketing: they were simply smaller, had many smaller suppliers to manage, and were not vertically integrated like many corporations that own the farms/ranches/orchards, the trucking companies, the food processing, and the retail stores. Once the major chains like Kroger/Albertsons/etc. had organic foods for sale, and with the advent of Trader Joe's, Whole Foods was losing market share.
But in huge swaths of urban areas and denser suburbs, when served by decent mass transit, the main reason for owning a car was to haul home the unwieldy food purchases. The average household makes 1.53 trips per week to the grocery store. Provide a viable alternative food delivery service and that frequency would drop to perhaps once per month, or special occasion cooking only - with shopping at a premium store such as Whole Foods on those occasions. Potentially, urban private vehicle ownership, already low, can fall further - perhaps by 1/2 to 2/3rds. Most of the loss would be made up in mass transit passengers who no longer need carry bulky food purchases, and patronage in Uber and like ride share services.
Potentially, this new paradigm of food delivery, in concert with ready to cook meals in the Blue Apron/Home Chef/Martha/etc. model, can save considerable time, motor fuel, and result in less food waste via spoilage.
The losers would seem to be the petroleum fuel suppliers for the most part. Then there would be erosion of food sales from Walmart (more than 3X as big as Kroger Foods) and local markets - both large chain stores and convenience markets.
Plantagenet wrote:-snip-
The jokes is that Amazon is trying to turn themselves into Wal-Mart faster then Wal-Mart can turn themselves into Amazon.
Cheers!
Cog wrote:I'm not going to say that Amazon's plan won't work. But have even a minor recession where cutting down on disposable income comes into play, and this model is dead in the water. I'm not a doomer long-term but recessions are a fact of life and investors know this. People like hype and stock investors certainly aren't immune to it. SnapChat ring a bell?
Plantagenet wrote:The whole point of Amazon is that they are cheaper then their competitors and they have a better, bigger selection.
Thats the main reason why people shop at Amazon---its cheaper.
...
Amazon is aiming straight at winning over Wal-Mart's clientele---the old, the people on benefits, the immigrants, and Amazon will offer them things cheaper then at Wal-Mart----including groceries, while at the same time continuing to sell everything that everybody else needs.
Outcast_Searcher wrote: if Amazon's goal from this venture were to sell cheap groceries head to head with, say, Kroger or Aldi or Walmart's grocery unit -- they would have bought Kroger or Aldi, NOT Whole Foods.
At least until recently, Whole Foods was nicknamed "whole paycheck" in many affluent consumer circles -- which is a key reason I've never been in the place.
Plantagenet wrote:Outcast_Searcher wrote: if Amazon's goal from this venture were to sell cheap groceries head to head with, say, Kroger or Aldi or Walmart's grocery unit -- they would have bought Kroger or Aldi, NOT Whole Foods.
At least until recently, Whole Foods was nicknamed "whole paycheck" in many affluent consumer circles -- which is a key reason I've never been in the place.
Allow me to respectfully disagree.
Wal-Mart is already moving ahead on changing the Whole Foods operating model so that it can deliver cheaper groceries---for instance they are reportedly going to lay off thousands of Whole Foods employees, reducing their labor costs and probably changing the culture there as well.
I agree with you that Amazon isn't always the absolute "cheapest"----but it is never the most expensive. The prices at Whole Foods are going to have to come down to make it competitive with Wal-Mart----and that is Amazon's goal.
Cheers!
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