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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#391

Post by twoodfin »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #387
twoodfin wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is “predatory pricing” vs. “pricing”?

Predatory pricing: A big gorilla comes in and under prices the entire market. They can do that because they already have tons of money. They do this long enough to break the market and drive the competition out of business. Once the competitors are gone they jack up the prices to unprecedented levels because there's no more alternatives available and bleed the market for all the money. Regular pricing: Charge a fair…

This presupposes some athletic new competitor can’t enter the market and take the margin off the fat incumbent.

It’s why we have capital markets: If capturing a profitable opportunity requires spending some money, someone who wants to profit will send that money your way.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#392

Post by dlcarrier »

nothercastle wrote: post #14

They never made sense to have but I’m sure someone made a huge career and got lots of bonuses for this initiative

John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, mentioned at the end of his autiobiography The Whole Story that that there wasn't much collaboration within the higher-ups at Amazon. From the gist of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the internal retail division was trying to outshine the Whole Foods division by throwing technology at everything, useful or not, because that's what Amazon corporate appreciates.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#393

Post by theshackleford »

direwolf20 wrote: post #329
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is far better for me than the old taxi system.

Maybe the one where you flagged down a car on the street, but you could always call to book a taxi and those companies worked exactly like Uber — over the phone, because it was the pre–app era.

> and those companies worked exactly like Uber

Not in my country they didn’t. Booking or no booking, taxis did whatever they wanted. More often than not your booked taxi just wouldn’t turn up and you wouldn’t know until well after you needed it.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#394

Post by dlcarrier »

jordemort wrote: post #54

I really liked the local Amazon Fresh, until they discontinued "just walk out" and replaced it with those hellish smart carts. I scanned one item successfully with the cart, got completely stuck trying to get it to scan a second one, handed the cart back to the employee, and never went back.

I just pay cash at the regular cashier. The smart carts aren't the speed-up Amazon wants them to be, but at least the faster traditional shopping method is still an option, unlike Amazon Go.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#395

Post by dlcarrier »

SirFatty wrote: post #31
justonceokay wrote: post #13

I’m in an interesting place. Here in Seattle I am two blocks from one of the largest Amazon Fresh stores. It was built on the former location of a local grocer. The construction was almost complete before Covid hit, but Amazon shuttered the store during that time. As a result there was no groceries in my neighborhood from 2018-2023. Now it seems Amazon is going to leave us a grocery desert yet again. They were piloti…

"non-union jobs program people at the registers because Amazon believes that cashier is a sub-human role." What grocery stores still have union workers?

The more-expensive stores sometimes do. My friend's wife works for one, and the store is closing because it's too close to a discount grocery to get enough traffic to stay open. The union is making her transfer to a much further location or lose her seniority, for some nonsense reason involving the closer locations historically being part of a different union, despite them now all being the same one.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#396

Post by BLKNSLVR »

chasd00 wrote: post #306
mcswell wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Quito Ecuador back in the late 70s/ early 80s. There was a hamburger place called "Burger Queen"--the name was in English, presumably to attract people who knew about Burger King. They had a sign that read "Casa del Whooper" (not Whopper).

That's pretty funny, in the old movie Coming to America there was a scene parodying something similar but it was McDowells vs McDonalds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djI_ret3S9g

The Golden Arcs

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#398

Post by kevstev »

liveoneggs wrote: post #89
Bluecobra wrote: post #76

Doesn’t surprise me. I frequently shop at Amazon Fresh in store and it’s a mediocre experience. It’s a poorly run store with no visible manager making sure things are in order. You constantly have to work around employees fulfilling online orders and they aren’t helpful. I always find expired groceries/produce on the shelf so I have to spend a lot of extra time inspecting each item. The only reason I put up with thei…

The delivery shoppers are especially bad at whole foods. There really must be a critical mass where having a grocery warehouse makes more sense than these people meandering around.

There is actually. I used to work in grocery e-commerce. The model is pickers in a store --> a "dark store" that looks more like a home Depot with only pickers, not open to public --> warehouse like environment with various levels of automation.

This was a bit before the model of having Uber driver type delivery though. I am guessing that having the deliverers be close to the deliverees make it more economical to keep them in stores until a larger scale is reached. The dark store+ model was also predicated on a more factory floor like environment with only FTEs present. Think pallets moving about among the pickers- not too hard to work around IMHO but maybe the lawyers and insurers feel differently.

I still feel the overreaching factor is that in dense urban centers there is no cheap commercial/industrial space that is also in close proximity to customers.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#400

Post by FireBeyond »

eithed wrote: post #95
nayroclade wrote: post #20

I always found the "Amazon 4-Star" name funny. Presumably when it was first pitched internally it was called "Amazon 5-Star", then they realised that meant they basically couldn't sell anything, since nothing popular gets a full 5 stars. So they changed it to "4-Star", which just sounds awkward, and lacks the suggestion of top-quality that "5-Star" would. Instead, it's like the "Amazon Not-too-bad" store. I was amaze…

When did naming things have to reflect reality? ie it's "Burger King" and not "Bearable Burger"

My fiancee used to work at a place called "Decent Pizza". Their motto "Not the best but not the worst."
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