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Costco is the anti-Amazon

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Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#121

Post by random3 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #113

Amazon is the anti-Costco also. We thought about it, and it doesn't really make sense to get a Costco membership when we can lean into Prime more. It doesn't help that we live in a fairly urban area (Ballard in Seattle) and Costco's is pretty suburban. I'd much rather order some heavy stuff from Amazon to have delivered and walk to the local grocery store for everything else.

You can order from Costco on Instacart here in the Bay Area. This said, there's a lot of quality stuff at Costco (besides their huge wines collection) that you can't find anywhere else.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#122

Post by gleenn »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #113

Amazon is the anti-Costco also. We thought about it, and it doesn't really make sense to get a Costco membership when we can lean into Prime more. It doesn't help that we live in a fairly urban area (Ballard in Seattle) and Costco's is pretty suburban. I'd much rather order some heavy stuff from Amazon to have delivered and walk to the local grocery store for everything else.

A major upside to Costco is you can actually see stuff and you also can walk out of the store same-day. Also I never ever worry about the counterfeit and/or low-quality crap you inevitably get from Amazon. And if Costco sells me something crappy, I drag it back in and don't even have to start up the printer (it's a zombie at this point). Costco has a running rule that they never charge above 10% in profits so I know I'm getting a good deal too.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#123

Post by alanbernstein »

claw-el wrote: post #79
lynndotpy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those individual trips to the store are typically for more than single items, and are often incorporated into trips one would have taken anyways as part of the doing of errands.

Technically, so is the home delivery. It is usually a delivery truck full of packages for nearby addresses.

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.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#124

Post by dragontamer »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #77
dragontamer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are specifically incentivized to be efficient at scale. They'll tend to shop at loctions on the way home from work, or otherwise cut down on travel times because traffic sucks. I honestly can imagine that Costco is overall more efficient than Amazon, especially for people who do shop at Costco. If there's no Costco closeby, its more likely that the individual humans will shop elsewhere or somewhere more conven…

this isn't even close to true and falls apart in a number of ways, the most popular vehicle in america right now (F-series truck) is woefully inefficient for just about everything there are people who regularly go out of their way to drive to their favorite store for like 1-2 special items, people bring their dogs along on trips for companionship and leave them sitting in an air conditioned idling car while they shop…

Special items they can't get off Amazon, I presume? So they need to take that trip anyway.

No one is driving an hour out of their way for groceries.

And even the F150 truck example: if they are driving 30 miles to work, but 10 miles to Costco and 25 miles to home (Costco being 5 miles out of the way.), that F150 going 5 extra miles is more efficient than a Prius driving 25 miles from a Costco to their home.

Integrating routes throughout the day that matches your driving habits is a basic adulting task that everyone does, and has reasonably high efficiency.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#125

Post by Zambyte »

Loudergood wrote: post #45
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…

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.

Anything to avoid walkable neighborhoods, naturally.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#126

Post by khurs »

All the comments appear to be US centric, but Costco is also in other countries. So to tell you about the UK:

Here membership is unusual in that it isn't technically open to everyone, it's business and certain professions: https://www.costco.co.uk/membership but in reality anyone who wants to join can find a way.

Also no mention in the article of non-food. In UK Costco is known for special offers on electrical and white good and more. And cheap car tyres iirc

In the UK not everyone drives like USA and Costco's are few and far between, so that limits who shops there. So a niche player compared to the Supermarkets for consumer shopping.

And people also have smaller homes compared to USA and smaller families maybe (or smaller portion sizes...!), and Costco here is more geared towards selling in bulk, and to corner shops and other small businesses. It's more of a hybrid Wholesaler.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#127

Post by skeeter2020 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #113

Amazon is the anti-Costco also. We thought about it, and it doesn't really make sense to get a Costco membership when we can lean into Prime more. It doesn't help that we live in a fairly urban area (Ballard in Seattle) and Costco's is pretty suburban. I'd much rather order some heavy stuff from Amazon to have delivered and walk to the local grocery store for everything else.

What about the price-quality aspect? Costco blows Amazon away here IME. Plus there's the fact that someone can become an employee of Costco out of high school and spend their entire career there, with decent wages and benefits. That's not happening at an Amazon Prime fulfillment warehouse.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#128

Post by micromacrofoot »

dragontamer wrote: post #124
micromacrofoot wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this isn't even close to true and falls apart in a number of ways, the most popular vehicle in america right now (F-series truck) is woefully inefficient for just about everything there are people who regularly go out of their way to drive to their favorite store for like 1-2 special items, people bring their dogs along on trips for companionship and leave them sitting in an air conditioned idling car while they shop…

Special items they can't get off Amazon, I presume? So they need to take that trip anyway. No one is driving an hour out of their way for groceries. And even the F150 truck example: if they are driving 30 miles to work, but 10 miles to Costco and 25 miles to home (Costco being 5 miles out of the way.), that F150 going 5 extra miles is more efficient than a Prius driving 25 miles from a Costco to their home. Integrati…

I'm surprised you don't know any inefficient people! I know many. A friend drives 15 minutes out of the way because that grocery store is a little less crowded (they're the same chain). They've probably been doing it for a decade.

> that F150 going 5 extra miles is more efficient than a Prius driving 25 miles from a Costco to their home.

but that's not what's happening, Amazon isn't driving a Prius to your individual home then back to the warehouse... it's driving to a hundred people on an algorithmically optimized route. They do this because efficiency at scale makes them more profit.

Individual people make inefficient preferential decisions all the time, because the incentive to measure and improve these things is too low to bother on an individual scale.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#130

Post by seanmcdirmid »

icantevenhold wrote: post #117
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #113

Amazon is the anti-Costco also. We thought about it, and it doesn't really make sense to get a Costco membership when we can lean into Prime more. It doesn't help that we live in a fairly urban area (Ballard in Seattle) and Costco's is pretty suburban. I'd much rather order some heavy stuff from Amazon to have delivered and walk to the local grocery store for everything else.

As someone who finds ordering groceries obscene what kind of heavy stuff do you get that you need to order in?

Generally the bulk things I would have gotten at Costco, which isn't much for our family, so mostly protein drinks, olive oil, and so on. They come in pretty big cases, and it definitely seems like the heaviest thing the Amazon driver is delivering that day.

We still drive to the Chinese grocery for a big bag of rice every once in awhile.

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