171–180 of 568 posts
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I wonder if Amazon will ever get to that point. It's hard to imagine.
As it grows larger, the "Amazon marketplace" is getting more and more filled with garbage knockoff products and fake reviews. There may eventually come a tipping point where they lose user trust.
Someone needs to analyze Sears' management behavior for the last few decades.
I am pretty sure some interesting patterns of ignorance and incompetence will emerge.
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Buying online and picking up from a store really isn't that advanced of a concept. You're right. Service Merchandise build an empire around it, just by mail or phone instead of computer. Other stores did it, too. JCPenny comes to mind. Even some local and regional chains. Amazon and others think they've invented something. But once again, it's just SV re-inventing something that worked last century.
And by the early 90s Sears had a century of experience as a catalog fulfillment company and had pretty much become synonymous with the concept.
How much of Sears's demise was due to Walmart? It's not like retail completely died. The home improvement chains hurt them too, once they started selling tools and appliances. We bought everything at Sears in the 80's. Electronics (including computers), appliances, toys, clothes, tools, lawn and garden... Was Sears too 'friendly' with their suppliers? When I worked at Sears at the end of the 1990's (the store was a g…
Sears also just wasn't able to get how to move its catalog online. My parents purchased a house that was mostly built with Sears appliances and furniture (cabinets, counters, etc). Ordering replacement parts from Sears was a chore; you were constantly moved around to tons of different domains, some of which weren't even made human readable; their inventory system was terrible, making it impossible to find the parts b…
And then just one more in the pile with this "online" thing. And like all the others, it came and went.... oh wait... it came and stayed? It came and grew!? It came and destroyed !?? Well I guess you can't call them all.
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So what I'm hearing is "so big they had to fail".
I wonder if Amazon will ever get to that point. It's hard to imagine.
It used to be the place where you could get anything for a good price in 2 days and trust the quality.
Now the selection is getting iffy in favor of house brands, Prime has a ton of strings attached (add-on, pantry, now) if it's offered at all, Amazon delivery is awful, the prices aren't nearly as good as they used to be, reviews are mostly fake, and you have to work to avoid knockoffs.
Most people I know have dropped Prime and significantly reduced their orders. They haven't stopped entirely, but it seems to be more of a "Wal-Mart" in their minds - a quick and easy necessary evil, not something they particularly enjoy.
It probably doesn't signify their decline yet, but it certainly seems to be a new stage in their lifecycle.
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I thought this as well until I heard a counter-point [0] which was very convincing. The reason Amazon is successful is not because you can shop online (from a catalog) and receive items in the mail. The reason Amazon is successful is because you can do those things and receive your items within two days. Before Prime existed, Amazon had very quick fulfillment, and after Prime two-day it became even better. The Sears…
While this is generally true, imagine if Sears had honestly realized their competitors potential and tried to compete. They had the country covered in stores and could have easily cut shipping times down by shipping from the nearest one. Their stores were also a hodgepodge of junk all randomly mixed, and they never made their store a desirable place to stroll.
I think it requires something very special for an organization to accept to canibalize itself. Apple is the only exemple that I would see at a behemoth scale.
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I am extremely wary of n=1 reasoning. It ends us being confirmation bias. We look at Sears, note that they pay more than Walmart, and say that paying employees more either has no effect, or is harmful. But are we also looking at the thousands of businesses that pay their employees terrible wages, but go out of business? Businesses are complex systems that defy the search for simple explanations. That won't stop human…
> This is like saying that if all other things are equal, a restaurant that pays more for its ingredients will lose business to competitors that pay less. Well, isn’t that one also true? There are limits and exceptions, obviously, but yeah, I’m pretty sure there is a strong correlation between the cost (cheapness) of ingredients and total sales.
Amazon and WalMart are good examples of this. They don't just cut one cost and wait for the money to flow in. They build their entire business around leveraging low-cost, in ways that are extraordinarily difficult to copy.
It's not as simple as, "Pay less wages, cut prices by a few cents, but keep doing everything else the same," any more than running a fast food restaurant is about buying cheaper ingredients and "passing the savings along to diners."
Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. They threw it all away, ending catalog operations in 1993 a year before Amazon.com opened in 1994. They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Yet somehow thought it was a better move to expand into bigger box re…
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For many it is here. If I can get the same product from walmart I do because returns onstore are easier and the product comes quickier without prime. Products always come at the very end of the fullfillment date but with walmart they fill the order before the expected date.
Even with Prime, the couriers Amazon uses to service some areas take long enough to deliver that most other online retailers are preferable.
But, if i order from an account without prime, they wait 11 days to ship, thus giving me 12 day delivery (just within their promised 2 weeks). If i order from an account with prime, it alternates between next day and two days.
Editing to add:
Last order without prime, Dec 28. “Shipped” yesterday (usps shows it arriving to them at 4:35 this morning from amazon, out for delivery today).
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It's a good example to those that claim companies should pay employees liberally. Unless you're in a niche that people are willing to pay a margin for or serve upscale customers who also don't mind paying margins (Costco, Whole Foods, Nordstroms, Apple, etc), then you're going to lose business to competitors offering lower prices. In this situation, the only way to improve the well being of those whose labor isn't as…
Costco is an upscale place to shop? I’ve never seen them lumped together with Whole Foods or even Apple. Edit: Wow I didn’t realize Costco’s profit margin was higher than Whole Foods, Wal Mart and almost a full percent above Kroger’s.