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Costco is the anti-Amazon

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Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#521

Post by insane_dreamer »

brailsafe wrote: post #251

My impression of Costco's selection is that it's the retail distillation of car-centric suburbs, despite it not being exclusively those people who shop there. The happy suburbanite cares about convenience and quantity above all else, from what I can tell anyway. They don't really have a varied sense of taste, they just want stuff, and they want easy access to that stuff. They like a "haul" that they do once a month,…

Costco is a must if you have teenage boys :)

the lack of choices for similar products is a huge plus for me - speeds up the shopping process considerably, and their curation is pretty good

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#522

Post by eep_social »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #172
m463 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems costco can deliver HEAVY things that amazon can't (economically, afaict)

I was reading the book "How the internet happened": During the dot com bubble, there was a company called furniture.com which basically lost a lot of its investor money by learning the hard truth that IKEA also had to learn that shipping Heavy things like furniture isn't actually economical. I am not sure if costco's model could allow it but especially for amazon, if they tried to do it or make it their USP like furn…

> when Amazon was first established, one of the largest loopholes that they had used..

I thought for sure you were going to mention USPS “media” rates which allowed Amazon to ship books very cheaply.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#523

Post by maleldil »

Insanity wrote: post #431
adrianN wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is less traffic and hence less noise when people have stores at a walkable distance.

I doubt this is true. I walk to the store when I quickly need to get eggs or milk or something random I forgot. But I’ll drive to do the weekly grocery trip because I can’t carry food for a week (for a family) on my own without driving. It’s almost like the AI answering “should I walk or drive to the nearest carwash”. Sure I can walk, I just can’t complete the grocery shopping lol.

If you live within walking distance of a good shop, you likely would make more trips instead of buying in bulk once a week.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#524

Post by fragmede »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #223
fragmede wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not allowed in the building without a membership I wonder why other stores like Target don't do that as well. Beyond the obvious, it just seems like the way to go.

Walmart does, under the Sam's Club brand, and there's a handful of other regional ones. Conventional wisdom is that the market reached saturation in the 90s. There's a lot of people who just don't want to pay a membership fee.

Just have the fee be $0 then. Beats having the shelves be all locked up because people be stealing everything.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#525

Post by lkbm »

mlrtime wrote: post #415
antiframe wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do most American's have an Amazon delivery every other day? It's not what it feels like where I live, but I might live in a part of the country unusually avoiding Amazon. While I see an Amazon truck every day, they visit 1-2 houses around me out of hundreds. If feels like there are Amazon households that get a delivery every or every other day and non-Amazon households that order 1-5 times a year (if that) and batch…

That's not the real question.... The real question is "On my block, what is the probability of any given house having at least one delivery on any given day" I can say for certainty that Amazon delivers to my block every day. Adding 1 extra package is definitely more energy saving than me driving to Costco for the same thing.

> The real question is "On my block, what is the probability of any given house having at least one delivery on any given day"

In the city, I used to see multiple Amazon delivery trucks per day. On the rural road I now live on (dead end road with fewer than 30 households), USPS does most of the Amazon delivery, but this is somehow enough people that we see FedEx and/or UPS drive by pretty much every day in addition to USPS obviously driving by six days a week.

Given that they're also visiting the neighboring roads, it's definitely enough for an economy of scale.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#526

Post by razster »

jMyles wrote: post #508
missedthecue wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of Amazon astroturfing an HN thread to get more retail customers.

This doesn't seem at all unlikely to me. I think we sometimes forget the ease (in terms of scale and cost) of standing up a massive astroturfing campaign. That said, I don't think this particular comment has the flavor, tone, or message I'd expect, and it does seem to be a genuine HN poster.

And the kicker is that this could be an ai-agent doing the astroturfing. Now that even the common man can run local ai-agents that can post.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#529

Post by twoodfin »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #480
beAbU wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bodega is often (and usually unavoidably) more expensive than a bigger grocery retail chain that's further away. Price conscious buyers will opt to drive to the bigger, farther away store because it has more variety, and the essentials are cheaper. I know I do this.

Part of this is defacto deregulation allowing suppliers to overcharge smaller stores with less purchasing power than big chains. (The policy not to enforce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson%E2%80%93Patman_Act ). Part of this is overregulation, with zoning and planning departments enacting policies that make smaller retail spaces less attractive to builders and owners, leading to a low supply, and allowing egregi…

Why should the government have anything to say about price negotiations between producers and retailers of frozen pizzas?

Robinson-Patman is terrible law that’s more or less impossible to enforce equitably. So it hasn’t been.

Re: Costco is the anti-Amazon

#530

Post by Insanity »

maleldil wrote: post #523
Insanity wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt this is true. I walk to the store when I quickly need to get eggs or milk or something random I forgot. But I’ll drive to do the weekly grocery trip because I can’t carry food for a week (for a family) on my own without driving. It’s almost like the AI answering “should I walk or drive to the nearest carwash”. Sure I can walk, I just can’t complete the grocery shopping lol.

If you live within walking distance of a good shop, you likely would make more trips instead of buying in bulk once a week.

I don’t but YMMV of course. Maybe if I was single, but it’s just inefficient to go multiple times a week.

And then there’s heavier things to carry (drinks).

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