Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
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Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
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Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#2“It takes a lot of time and experimentation to work through unpredictable scenarios like a child picking up an item or a person wearing sunglasses or a face muffler,” he said.
This is funny. Because these aren't unpredictable scenarios at all in a grocery store, unless you are having to write software to deal with them.
Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#3i'd love it if they could do this in a way that ensures quality. my biggest problem with amazon currently is even with things as simple as cologne or cookware, you can't tell if what you'll get is real or a cheap knockoff.
Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#4I know this discusses a few strategic plays Amazon is making but shortfalls of the self-checkout project (AmazonGo) are interesting:
"In its video touting Amazon Go, the company said it was aiming to open the site to the public in “early 2017,” and it hasn’t provided an update to that timing. But the technology has been crashing in tests when the store gets too crowded and requires human quality control, people watching video images to make sure customers are charged for the right things, according to a person familiar with the plan."
Not super familiar with image recognition but do you think that's just a failure of the training data set or a much more complex technical problem?
Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#5“It takes a lot of time and experimentation to work through unpredictable scenarios like a child picking up an item or a person wearing sunglasses or a face muffler,” he said. This is funny. Because these aren't unpredictable scenarios at all in a grocery store, unless you are having to write software to deal with them.
I'll be a believer when it can handle a Thomas Crown scenario - multiple people in the same outfit crisscrossing around each other. While a bowler hat flashmob is unlikely, a group of similar dark jackets etc isn't.
Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#6 It lures inventors and retailers with shopping volume
and frequency, and then sinks them with low margin.
Grocery margins are razor thin. Local/Regional competition is insane.
Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#7Grocery net profits are 1.7%.
http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket-facts
Amazon barely makes money on retail operations. What is their rationalization in getting into this market?
Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#8Grocery net profits are 1.7%. http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket-facts Amazon barely makes money on retail operations. What is their rationalization in getting into this market?
From the article
>“Amazon wants to be the first thing any consumer thinks of when they need to buy anything,” said Jim Hertel, a senior vice president at marketing technology company Inmar Inc. “Food is the largest retail category. They can’t do what they want to do without grocery and they’re definitely not going to give up.”
I'd also imagine Amazon thinks they can do much better than a 1.7% margin by leveraging all of the improvements to their approach outlined in the article.
Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#9“It takes a lot of time and experimentation to work through unpredictable scenarios like a child picking up an item or a person wearing sunglasses or a face muffler,” he said. This is funny. Because these aren't unpredictable scenarios at all in a grocery store, unless you are having to write software to deal with them.
I'll be a believer when it can handle a Thomas Crown scenario - multiple people in the same outfit crisscrossing around each other. While a bowler hat flashmob is unlikely, a group of similar dark jackets etc isn't.
Actually, you can't forget the possibility that someone will attack it, for profit or even just the lulz. If you have the idea I can pretty much promise someone's going to try it long before there's a 1000 of these stores.
Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market
#10Grocery net profits are 1.7%. http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket-facts Amazon barely makes money on retail operations. What is their rationalization in getting into this market?
Margins don't tell whole story of that business.If you start with $100 and sell $100 worth of products each year, than yes, your profit will be 1.7%.
But if sell products fast("inventory turnover - TTM") and re-use the money, with $100, you can sell $1000 of product per year,getting 17% yearly ROI.
But of course 1.7% is low so it's not easy staying on the positive side of profit.