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Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

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Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#51

Post by flachsechs »

iamleppert wrote: post #32
ng12 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish we would just ban grocery stores for good and try to go back to this form of food consumerism. I'm sure that'll work out great for people who live in poor communities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

It would help them the most -- getting rid of grocery stores that sell low quality, sugary mass produced foods and going back to local micro farmers markets is in what form of reality a bad thing?

either those people can't afford locally produced food, or the farmers can't afford to do it at the prices they'd demand.

people need affordable supermarkets. this isn't complicated, it's unfortunately just not very profitable to serve these people.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#52

Post by jdeseno »

joezydeco wrote: post #12
jamestimmins wrote: post #7

As the article hints, this jump is likely driven in part by the millions of dollars of free advertising Whole Foods received from the news, and not simply because there were price cuts.

If you live in a town with a Whole Foods, you already know it's there. And nothing physically changed to the stores overnight. Announcing a price cut seems way more likely to draw in comparison shoppers to see what cuts were made, and if they compare to people's current regular supermarkets.

FYI many (possibly all) of the Whole Foods here in Seattle did in fact change overnight: they added higher shelves, rearranged the layouts & product placements etc. All of this happened within the final day of the switch from what I can tell.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#53

Post by cortesoft »

iamleppert wrote: post #30

People here are smart enough to realize what this is: a publicity stunt. Even if you have money, shopping at Whole Foods is foolish. Amazon reduced a fraction of the items prices, they are still heavily over-priced, and the food quality for the price is low. Whole Foods is a grocery store that prices it's food high to attract a certain type of consumer. That's all. If you want high quality food, I encourage you to vi…

I am not sure farmer's markets are prepared, and perhaps could never be prepared, for the type of volume they would have to do to entirely replace grocery stores.

As someone who lives in a big city, grocery stores here are packed at all hours. There will be dozens of checkout lines open going through customers as fast as they can. There are a ton of grocery stores, too, with each one as busy.

Farmer's markets are clearly not as effecient at serving customers as a supermarket, which means they would be even more crowded. We would have to have a LOT more of them to replace all of the supermarkets, and they would take up a lot more space than the current supermarkets to serve the same number of people.

As a busy parent of a toddler, grocery shopping already takes up a lot more time than I want it to. I can't imagine trying to fit the extra time it would take to shop at a farmers market for everything into my schedule.

When we think about making some sort of massive change to the way we live our lives (like everyone doing all shopping at farmer's markets), we have to really think about what it would mean to operate at that scale. What might work great for you as an individual may not work for everyone in the world, if everyone were to change their behavior.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#54

Post by cortesoft »

iamleppert wrote: post #32
ng12 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish we would just ban grocery stores for good and try to go back to this form of food consumerism. I'm sure that'll work out great for people who live in poor communities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

It would help them the most -- getting rid of grocery stores that sell low quality, sugary mass produced foods and going back to local micro farmers markets is in what form of reality a bad thing?

The people referenced in the article don't even HAVE grocery stores, they just have things like 7/11 or other quicky marts.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#55

Post by hammock »

hammock wrote: post #15
jamestimmins wrote: post #7

As the article hints, this jump is likely driven in part by the millions of dollars of free advertising Whole Foods received from the news, and not simply because there were price cuts.

Well of course, that goes without saying. The best product in the world won't sell if no one knows about it.

Not sure why I'm being downvoted. A price cut might net you more sales from existing customers, but you don't get a 25% jump in foot traffic without people being told about the price cuts (whether thru paid advertising or word of mouth/earned media)

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#56

Post by cabaalis »

iamleppert wrote: post #30

People here are smart enough to realize what this is: a publicity stunt. Even if you have money, shopping at Whole Foods is foolish. Amazon reduced a fraction of the items prices, they are still heavily over-priced, and the food quality for the price is low. Whole Foods is a grocery store that prices it's food high to attract a certain type of consumer. That's all. If you want high quality food, I encourage you to vi…

Whole Foods customers did expect to receive "premium" food at a premium price, but even the richest of them were starting to notice that it was so significantly higher that they would shop elsewhere for at least some of it. Lowering the prices to the point where they are still higher than everyone else but not godlike is a return to the premium feel.

Tech analogy: Apple's stuff truly is much more expensive than most other stuff, but not so expensive that it's completely out of reach for upper to middle class incomes.

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#58

Post by GCA10 »

sumoboy wrote: post #3
mikeash wrote: post #2

Will it last? When I heard about the price cuts, I went in to check it out. I pretty much never shop there, so I'm part of that 25% jump. In the end I saw no real difference and no reason to return.

Amazon buys this companies and they never really seem to work out over time, eg. zappos, diapers. Major grocery chains will just get smarter and more aggressive with pricing.

Zappos's CEO gets more eccentric all the time, and the site's search function could use updating, but the selection remains excellent and service is first-rate. We still use them.

Other Amazon acquisitions such as IMDB, Goodreads and Audible seem to be humming along. Kiva, now Amazon Robots, is crushing it. (Little joke there.)

Re: Amazon's Whole Foods Price Cuts Brought 25% Jump in Shoppers

#59

Post by iamleppert »

cortesoft wrote: post #53
iamleppert wrote: post #30

People here are smart enough to realize what this is: a publicity stunt. Even if you have money, shopping at Whole Foods is foolish. Amazon reduced a fraction of the items prices, they are still heavily over-priced, and the food quality for the price is low. Whole Foods is a grocery store that prices it's food high to attract a certain type of consumer. That's all. If you want high quality food, I encourage you to vi…

I am not sure farmer's markets are prepared, and perhaps could never be prepared, for the type of volume they would have to do to entirely replace grocery stores. As someone who lives in a big city, grocery stores here are packed at all hours. There will be dozens of checkout lines open going through customers as fast as they can. There are a ton of grocery stores, too, with each one as busy. Farmer's markets are cle…

You can't fit in an hour every weekend to go get food, that's cheaper and better quality than a grocery store to feed you and your family?
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