281–290 of 410 posts
Not to mention Walmart already has a reputation for being the bottom barrel brand, they can't compete with Amazon on price, Amazon even has leeway to increase the value of its products and services and say "we're not Walmart".
This is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a ge…
I think concerns about Amazon becoming a monopoly are greatly exaggerated. They are getting attacked from all sides, by Microsoft in the cloud and Wal-Mart in ecommerce. As Microsoft grabs share from them in web services it'll reduce Amazon's ability to cross-subsidize its ecommerce business. As Wal-Mart and Costco continue to catch up in ecommerce and free two-day shipping becomes table stakes in ecommerce, Amazon's…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It also is not unheard of for Wal-Mart to demand to examine the private financial records of a supplier, and to insist that its margins are too high and must be cut." https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know
Sorry if this gets too tangential, but ... you ever notice how people are horrified by that, but at the same time actively advocate that the government use its "bargaining" (monopsony) power to force down drug prices, and believe the only downsides will be to drug company profits?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not stupid to not want to feed money and data about your operations to a direct competitor. Maybe amazon would look at the data, maybe they wouldn't but if they did they would do it in a way that was nearly 100% impossible to ever prove. Corporate espionage is a very deep rabbit hole, and goes on far more often than people think it does. Why give them the opportunity to do so?
It is very hard to do business if you think like that. Do you think Amazon sabotaged Netflix on the day before Thanksgiving a while back to further their own business? I don' think so.
Interesting that Netflix (biggest competitor to Amazon Prime Video) still is on AWS. Not sure who is being savvy and who is being short sighted.
I sold to Walmart for 4 years. In the beginning we believed we were lucky to become vendors. Then we realized how much stress they created. Every single year they would short pay our invoices. We would have to submit a claim with Walmart accounting. This process was completely and utterly time consuming. But the worst of it, they wouldn't pay the invoices owed until a year later. It's hard to float a $100,000 short p…
In the UK, for example, even before the EU directive, unpaid commercial debts accrue interest and late payment penalties and can be claimed retrospectively for up to six years. This means that you can quite legally wait until you've stopped doing business with a particular customer before then claiming late payment penalties and interest.
These rights cannot be waived by contract.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except you're imagining power in entirely the wrong place. It is the consumers who hold all the power within a free economy. Corporations only become large and profitable in a free economy when they meet the ever increasing demands of the consumers. To quote Ludwig von Mises: The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers. They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, deci…
Consumers, in aggregate, are stupid and irrational. Their wants and desires and opinions can be shaped by the entities with the most resources to peddle their influence, or the best, most believable lies. Economics can't really fix such a core design flaw in human nature, it has to be the other way around, IMHO.
This is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a ge…
I think concerns about Amazon becoming a monopoly are greatly exaggerated. They are getting attacked from all sides, by Microsoft in the cloud and Wal-Mart in ecommerce. As Microsoft grabs share from them in web services it'll reduce Amazon's ability to cross-subsidize its ecommerce business. As Wal-Mart and Costco continue to catch up in ecommerce and free two-day shipping becomes table stakes in ecommerce, Amazon's…
1) Walmart may be the biggest retailer in the US, but they don't have half of the US homes as subscribers. Amazon Prime does. I doubt Walmart.com attracts any where near as many e-tail visitors as Amazon, and I suspect the gap is widening.
2) Amazon is decades ahead of Walmart in the online shopper experience. I grit my teeth each time I visit Walmart's website. It's slow and ugly and very clumsy to navigate or search. And it hasn't gotten better after years of this.
3) Walmart's products are mostly middle-to-down-market, even online, and that doesn't seem to have changed all that much even as they've grown their e-tail efforts. Try buying a nice watch or high-end stereo equipment there. No such ceiling applies to Amazon, probably because Amazon welcomes re-sellers (which can span all market niches), while Walmart doesn't.
So I think Walmart has a long way to go to compete equally with Amazon, and isn't a comparable threat as an all 'round monopoly.
And personally, I don't hate Amazon enough to object to a monopoly threat from them the way I do Walmart. I think ill-will does matter when it comes to federal action on anti-competition. If Microsoft were as despised as AT&T was in 1984, they would be in pieces today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was referring to these smaller firms as was addressed in the comment. Regarding the major book selling firms, Amazon are the good guys because a relatively few book firms control the market. Amazon is helping to improve the customer experience by lowering the price of books.
> Amazon are the good guys because a relatively few book firms control the market. Amazon is helping to improve the customer experience by lowering the price of books. they're replacing an oligopoly that is exploiting their customers with a monopoly though. amazon hasn't really started exploiting its monopoly status yet (to my knowledge) toward the consumers, but a lot of authors have already started to complain abou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suppliers are free to tell Walmart to stuff it.
"Free" in the sense that they have the 1st Amendment right to do so. Not in the sense that they actually can, especially once Walmart gets to be a significant customer to them.
And if you're creating a valuable product at a good price, then you have leverage over Walmart. If you're selling a commodity, then be prepared to get squeezed. That's how it should work.