Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#2The article answers its own question. Amazon decides which neighborhoods get Prime Same Day service by the number of Prime subscribers in that neighborhood. Predominantly African-American neighborhoods have fewer Prime subscribers, so they don't get Prime Same Day; presumably it would be even less profitable to serve those neighborhoods than it is to offer Prime Same Day to neighborhoods with high concentrations of Prime subscribers.
The article feels to me like a stretch. It isn't up to Amazon to solve racial and income inequalities in the US. And, by all accounts, Prime Same Day isn't a money-maker for Amazon. So the writers of this article are asking Amazon to lose even more money in an effort to offer same-day deliveries to underserved neighborhoods. It's a valid ask, but I won't be too outraged if Amazon continues on its present course.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#3My god, how could anyone be expected to overcome poverty and inequality without same-day prime delivery? Sure there's still two-day prime delivery that the majority of Amazon Prime members of all races have, but clearly that's no different than the grim inequality of segregated water fountains and poll taxes.
The implied conclusion is that a business should do something that loses them revenue if the alternative is a vague insinuation of structural racism. By this same logic, luxury car dealerships should build their showrooms in inner-city ghettos and rural areas because everyone has a right to test drive a Ferrari, economics be damned.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#4"White areas get organic grocers and designer boutiques" - no faster way to get out of poverty than shopping at Whole Foods
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#5How about Amazon just focus on maximizing profit within the boundary of the law of the given area?
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#6No.
That was easy. Next question?
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#7Clearly Amazon.com is racist.
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#8No. That was easy. Next question?
add a link to the [Betteridge's law of headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines) for people who don't know better
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#9I'm disappointed though not surprised by comments suggesting that Amazon only pay attention to their bottom line. Why shouldn't they do more for racial inequality? That's just as meaningful as $$. Powerful corporations are more and more like governments -- they should be looking out for us, and we should be asking them to.
Why not raise our standards?
Re: Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It?
#10They're also pretty bad at rolling out their services to countries outside of the US. In Canada we've been told that we're getting Amazon's MP3 music store for years, but it still hasn't come, let alone any Amazon video. I'm actually somewhat surprised that we got Kindle books, although that was years after the US. You can forget things like the Echo at all.
Amazon Prime is just shipping in Canada. Where I live, I'd get shipments about a day sooner than free shipping so it's not worth it for me.