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Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

seattletimes.com

31–40 of 43 posts

Re: Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

#31
post #4

.... in which the Seattle Times discovers that grocery stores use items at or below cost to lure in buyers to purchase other things at the store. 12 packs of coke were often sold at a loss at grocery stores. I'm not sure what they cost now, but cost use to be in the $3.50 range in 2007. Costco was usually about a bit more than the cost but they were selling 24 can flats, so probably still turning a profit. In 2007 it…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader

Certainly not a new thing.

Re: Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

#32
> "Do they take the profit from their non-retail efforts, which today is primarily cloud computing, and then reinvest those profits to take share in grocery?" Forte said.

Yes. Even better, they can push people to sign up for Prime by jacking up prices for non-Prime members. When faced with these "loyalty" programs elsewhere, I just type in a fake phone number, or an old land line that has probably been reassigned. I suspect you can't do that at Amazon stores.

Re: Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

#33
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From article “They might be selling those at cost or as loss leaders just to get people into the stores,” Besecker said.

Which grocery stores have been doing for years.

does krogers have equivalent of aws to eat its losses?

Re: Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

#34
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which grocery stores have been doing for years.

does krogers have equivalent of aws to eat its losses?

Quality, sustainable food should be subsidized. I'm not understanding why this is not a win.

Re: Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does krogers have equivalent of aws to eat its losses?

Quality, sustainable food should be subsidized. I'm not understanding why this is not a win.

Because if Amazon can beat out the competition, if they become a monopoly they might not keep the prices low.

Re: Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

#37
post #35

I'm more interested in the fact that someone is fishing for halibut in a 103 year old wooden schooner in 2019. The rest of this article is in my opinion, not news.

This is actually more common than you'd think. There are plenty of older wooden boats still fishing both in the lower 48 and up north. The old halibut schooners are some of the most prized boats out there.

Re: Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

#38
post #16
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSC ensures sustainable fishing practices, and this is costly. https://fisheries.msc.org/en/fisheries/us-north-pacific-hali... After Amazon acquired Whole Foods, many speculated that they would lower prices by reducing quality. This is an example of lowering prices while maintaining standards.

> This is an example of lowering prices while maintaining standards. Nah. It's an example of a "loss leader." The zero-margin price on some items isn't sustainable on all items and just serves to get people in the door. It's a shade of the same spectrum as "predatory pricing," which can be illegal but is not always. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

Amazon can in fact take their grocery business to zero profit safely, trivially. That includes taking Whole Foods down to near zero operating profit levels.

It's the ideal approach and classic Bezos. Their competitors can't afford to match it in the hyper low margin grocery business. Walmart can try, however their profits have already been badly squeezed downward for the last five or six years in a row now, in competition with Amazon.

Kroger, a $121 billion sales giant, has a mere 2% operating income margin. Amazon can tip them over and kill them very easily by eliminating that small remaining margin. Kroger effectively has zero margin of safety in their business, they can't afford even the smallest of drawn out price wars with Amazon. Kroger also has little safety buffer in their balance sheet, barely positive in assets and a small sliver of cash; while Amazon has $37 billion in cash. Bet on a Kroger bankruptcy or forced sale in the coming decade, pinned between Amazon and Walmart.

AWS is set to be a ~$15 billion per year profit juggernaut five years out. Their ad business is going to generate a minimum of $8 billion in profit at that point.

They can very easily bury the entire US grocery industry at zero margin to pursue aggressive market consolidation (the grocery market is extremely fractured). There is no other means for them to compete in groceries other than for Amazon to take the margin down to a level where they drown everyone else in their path, while not having to worry because of their profit offsets in the rest of the business.

Predatory pricing is not a concern in this scenario. Walmart has always done exactly the same thing in subsidizing one part of their business with another depending on where they're looking to expand market share. They've rarely had a problem with regulators over it.

Re: Alaskan halibut provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I don't speak English" spoken in perfect English. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em.

Why go out of your way to confuse a low-paid worker just trying to do their job?

I don't reserve it for low-paid workers. I say that to anyone who wants to talk to me with whom I do not wish to speak.

I actually came up with it back when "day trading" was a big thing and self-styled financial geniuses would approach me at Starbucks to pitch their services.

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