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Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

bloomberg.com

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Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#51

Post by nol13 »

baron816 wrote: post #42

Physical supermarkets can still be really terrible. It always seems to take me over an hour to do my grocery shopping. My idea to bring the industry into the 21st century would be take a similar route to Blue Apron et al, where all the ingredients are combined into a single package. The difference is that the work of preparation would be distributed to local restaurants looking to supplement their income, and people…

"Physical supermarkets can still be really terrible. It always seems to take me over an hour to do my grocery shopping."

An accident, this is not.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#52

Post by komali2 »

justaman wrote: post #11
lotso wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

2030: Government breaks up Amazon into smaller companies.

Why would that happen? US government appears quite happy to allow massive companies to operate as they please. There hasn't been much "trust busting" since, well, the "trust busting" era, outside of finance anyway.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#53

Post by scrollaway »

brokenmasonjars wrote: post #48

Sort of wish they'd focus on what they already have first. I mean I get it, it's a good market to get into ...but.. how about - making a single login for abebooks fr, uk, com, etc.. that aligns with your main amazon account and - audible account. Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on services owned by the same company? Better yet, how about taking the databases of books on sale at the various abebooks sub regio…

> making a single login for [...] Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on services owned by the same company?

Wasn't this what the HN community was up in arms about when Google did it for YouTube?

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#54

Post by swampthinker »

scrollaway wrote: post #53
brokenmasonjars wrote: post #48

Sort of wish they'd focus on what they already have first. I mean I get it, it's a good market to get into ...but.. how about - making a single login for abebooks fr, uk, com, etc.. that aligns with your main amazon account and - audible account. Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on services owned by the same company? Better yet, how about taking the databases of books on sale at the various abebooks sub regio…

> making a single login for [...] Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on services owned by the same company? Wasn't this what the HN community was up in arms about when Google did it for YouTube?

Not really. The backlash came more from Google trying to push G+ alongside that YouTube rollout.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#55

Post by ars »

jhpankow wrote: post #35
ghaff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon already has subscriptions. Personally, I don't buy anything with a combination of frequency and predictability that makes a subscription make sense but obviously some people do. (Diapers I assume are one thing.) And that becomes harder with with perishables. Customizable but pre-populated (based on prior purchases) would seem to make a lot more sense.

My SO has signed is up for subscriptions for certain recurring purchases. Our usage is too erratic to put on a schedule. I have a new job at home: finding a place for all the things we get automagically delivered from Amazon that we aren't ready to consume. I finally spoke up when we had three containers of dishwasher soap and nowhere to put them.

They email you before sending you stuff, just skip the delivery if you don't want it.

Personally I set everything to six months and then bring it forward when I need some.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#56

Post by ryanworl »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #44
petra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is net-profit from revenue, i.e. from those $1000 of sold goods. But you only need to invest $100 to buy them.

No. Sell them then invest another $100 to restock. ROI remains at 1.7%.

Your model is too simplistic here. The actual cash leaving Amazon's bank account may not be due to their supplier until 30 or 60 days after delivery. If it takes Amazon 6 days to sell that $100 worth of goods, they can effectively sell $1000 worth of product before that initial cash is due to the supplier if we're talking net 60.

This is how a $100 initial cash investment in inventory can produce $17 worth of cash at the end. You use your leverage with lots of small suppliers to force them into offering generous credit.

Note: this ignores the fact that these numbers are based on net profit instead of gross profit which would be the actual relevant number here. And the gross profit in groceries is a lot higher than 1.7%.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#57

Post by brokenmasonjars »

scrollaway wrote: post #53
brokenmasonjars wrote: post #48

Sort of wish they'd focus on what they already have first. I mean I get it, it's a good market to get into ...but.. how about - making a single login for abebooks fr, uk, com, etc.. that aligns with your main amazon account and - audible account. Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on services owned by the same company? Better yet, how about taking the databases of books on sale at the various abebooks sub regio…

> making a single login for [...] Why do I need maybe 7 different accounts on services owned by the same company? Wasn't this what the HN community was up in arms about when Google did it for YouTube?

I don't really consider myself part of HN. I'm an observer. Lots of interesting articles are shared with some great comments that follow.

I think though the Google and Youtube stuff is a bit different than what I would like to see with Amazon and abebooks. Youtube was known for it's commenting feeds, there was an anonymity around making comments with usernames to hide behind. Forcing you to create a single login so to connect to your profile page on Google removed that anonymity and was aimed at curtailing the atmosphere found in the comment sections. Thankfully, it has prevailed to some extent as I always enjoyed the comments on videos despite how crude they can be at times. It's cheap entertainment. For Amazon/Abebooks... I mean it's really about just ordering products. I suppose if you write reviews there is that issue sort of but not really either. I rarely see reviews on abebooks compared to amazon. The atmosphere within reviews on Amazon say pre-2009(?) was humorous as well. However it seems Amazon has long stamped out the trolling comments/reviews. The comparison I think might not work so well then in regards to single login. Especially considering that abebooks/amazon aspect is to order things and have it shipped to my house..my residents. I'm not necessarily trying to be anonymous behind various usernames. I rarely do reviews, and it's with a different account usually to counter books that only have 1 review by someone giving it 1 star because it took too long to ship..or something thus not based on the content of the book. Well I use to anyways counter that stuff but I really don't care much these days so I don't really bother. I just want to simply order books without having to log onto 7+ different sites all owned by the same corporation.

edit: more words added.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#58

Post by ghaff »

jhpankow wrote: post #35
ghaff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon already has subscriptions. Personally, I don't buy anything with a combination of frequency and predictability that makes a subscription make sense but obviously some people do. (Diapers I assume are one thing.) And that becomes harder with with perishables. Customizable but pre-populated (based on prior purchases) would seem to make a lot more sense.

My SO has signed is up for subscriptions for certain recurring purchases. Our usage is too erratic to put on a schedule. I have a new job at home: finding a place for all the things we get automagically delivered from Amazon that we aren't ready to consume. I finally spoke up when we had three containers of dishwasher soap and nowhere to put them.

Want to read something funny. Check out the Bounty oversupply: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-09-12/how-to-st...

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#59

Post by ghaff »

ars wrote: post #55
jhpankow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My SO has signed is up for subscriptions for certain recurring purchases. Our usage is too erratic to put on a schedule. I have a new job at home: finding a place for all the things we get automagically delivered from Amazon that we aren't ready to consume. I finally spoke up when we had three containers of dishwasher soap and nowhere to put them.

They email you before sending you stuff, just skip the delivery if you don't want it. Personally I set everything to six months and then bring it forward when I need some.

Even if there are some small savings, at some point it's just less mental energy to place an order when you need something, which takes? I dunno 2 minutes.

Re: Amazon’s Battle to Break into the Grocery Market

#60

Post by CobrastanJorji »

samfisher83 wrote: post #7

Grocery 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?

For other companies, I would agree with you, but Amazon is basically allergic to high margin businesses. Their entire business is based around scaling up low margin businesses to be so efficient that nobody can compete with them.
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