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Costco is the anti-Amazon

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Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#181

Post by christina97 »

This post seems quite far fetched. Amazon is well aware of the paradox of choice, and the vast majority of UI changes I have seen recently are exactly those that guide and reinforce you to buy one option, without the decision paralysis. Items are not homogeneous, and it is obvious that they try to concentrate purchases to a smaller set of SKUs to reap the same benefits as Costco. It’s simply that Amazon can additionally support the long tail of SKUs with a heterogeneous warehouse system (and heterogeneous profit margins).

On the delivery side: US suburbia is just in general not a sustainable solution. Delivery is just one way in which it bites. Somewhere like NYC, the amortized delivery cost (internalized or externalized) is very low (and opposite to Costcos which require a drive to an inconvenient location).

The bit about agents doing your shopping is falling for the same trap as crypto people thinking NFTs will kill Ticketmaster. These have never been technical problems: the APIs don’t exist for nontechnical reasons.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#182

Post by alanbernstein »

claw-el wrote: post #174
alanbernstein wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, 100 trucks delivering 100 single items to 100 homes, or 100 consumers each making 1 trip to buy 100 things. It really depends on the details too much to simplify it so far.

It is more like 1 truck delivering 100 single items to 100 homes.

No, not if you're matching the volume of items between the two scenarios.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#183

Post by serial_dev »

cyberrock wrote: post #171
Loudergood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this argument falls flat on it's face. Of course it's more complex than that. When I worked from the office, centralized retail was very convenient and hardly added any driving. If you work from home, the opposite is true. The next revolution would be to standardize reusable packaging, that same daily delivery truck could bring that back. But only government could make that happen.

That idea is intriguing but brings up a lot of questions. If I live out in the middle of nowhere, order something but take a long time to open it, when does the Amazon truck come back to take the packaging? If there's a million of us procrastinators, is it really that much better than normal centralized garbage collection? Milk bottle delivery and collection only worked because the product naturally had a time limit,…

You don’t need time limit, you just need to deal with the company frequently enough for this to work.

How I would imagine this work if there was will (I don’t think there is)… there are online grocery delivery services that do this already, it’s not that complicated.

You get your stuff delivered in a reusable bag. They charge you 1 dollar for the bag. Next time you have something delivered, you give the bags back and you’ll get your money back.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#184

Post by petra »

gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

Judging Amazon's social value by delivery efficiency is just wrong.

Amazon's biggest benefit is that anything can be sold there. So now more problems in my life could have a solutions I can buy.

As for the delivery? There are more efficient ways to send deliveries. People can pickup deliveries at work or the gas station on their way home.

People don't care. How is that Amazon's fault?

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#185

Post by tomcam »

rr808 wrote: post #75

I dont like Costco, it epitomizes American over-consumption. Parking lot overflowing with oversized SUVs with people loading up oversized trolleys with food from food corporations to take back to their oversized fridges and storage basements.

What sizes of SUV, trolleys, fridges, and storage basements would meet with your approval?

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#186

Post by xoxxala »

imoverclocked wrote: post #86
gwbas1c wrote: post #33

> Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates. Home delivery of single-packaged items entails an entirely different cost structure than freight trucks driving to consumer-facing warehouses delivering entire pallets of goods to be driven home by customers themselves. Ok, so 100 people can all drive to t…

I go to Costco when I have something else to do in the area; It's almost never a "trip to Costco" for me. Others have mentioned the parking lot sizes. If we wanted the best of both worlds, we could have online shopping at Costco with curbside delivery. There has to be a warehouse somewhere which means there are trucks/trains/planes moving goods around regardless. Even Amazon builds warehouses closer to where things n…

We live two hours from the closest Costco. We make a day of it once every 45-60 days plus shop at other stores we don’t have in our small town and see some family. We don’t have an Amazon account and maybe order something online once a month. We prefer shopping locally or waiting for Costco Day.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#187

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #108

> Amazon often negotiates delayed payment terms with suppliers, leaning on them to allow payment windows longer than the thirty-day industry norm. Oh how I would wish for this crap to be banned. By law. Simply put, at the scale of "you are even allowed to sell at large volume to Amazon, Walmart, ..." you aren't on equal footing with Amazon. You are subservient. Contract law still builds on the idea that b2b contracts…

[deleted]

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#188

Post by fragmede »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #114
mschuster91 wrote: post #108

> Amazon often negotiates delayed payment terms with suppliers, leaning on them to allow payment windows longer than the thirty-day industry norm. Oh how I would wish for this crap to be banned. By law. Simply put, at the scale of "you are even allowed to sell at large volume to Amazon, Walmart, ..." you aren't on equal footing with Amazon. You are subservient. Contract law still builds on the idea that b2b contracts…

Why? Then we’d have to pay more to buy stuff.

Because Amazon and Walmart, as the giants they are, aren't hurting for cash. If you're a small time vendor or buyer, those 30 days could be the difference between eating tonight or going hungry. Meanwhile. Amazon and Walmart could just pay it out of their reserves early and Jeff Bezos isn't going to go hungry. Also, why would prices go up?

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#190

Post by serial_dev »

Backslasher wrote: post #19

The part about Costco choosing to avoid the last mile shipping problem reminded me of a proverb, roughly translated as: A clever person solves a problem; a wise person avoids it. I think it holds a lot of truth in engineering.

They don’t avoid the problem. They avoid solving it and let it be your problem.
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