61–70 of 78 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ahn? I think a self-driving car would still need someone to carry the product from the car to the door, or am I missing something?
Rumors are that Google is testing a grocery-delivery bipedal robot that can climb stairs, use the elevator, etc.
It is worthwhile to pay attention to history. Internet shopping has a good historical analog. Mail order catalogs. It took a long time for things to settle down, but eventually everyone wound up with both mailorder and retail outlets. Even the 800 pound gorilla of mailorder, Sears Roebuck, became a hybrid. It took decades before they opened their first store, but today it is mostly known as a chain of department stor…
Mail order catalogs never offered the opportunity to transcend the experience at a store. Digital experiences do theoretically offer that possibility. One example is using virtual augmented reality to see how that shoe rack will look in you're home, how does it combines with your wall and floor colors, etc. And this "digital better than real" has already started todat. Some high quality furniture retailers or hotels(…
Also I remember my mother taking out a catalog, putting the picture of the thing she wanted in the place she wanted it, then standing back to better imagine how its colors would fit in. That is a valuable feature that you can't get in a store. (Things do look different in different lighting.)
quote from the article: "I’d pay 20-50% more for products just to avoid the inconvenience (and corresponding delay) in going to a physical store, like Target." i stopped reading after that.
Exactly. The level of disconnect is concerning. Most people are shopping at Target or Walmart because things are 20% cheaper there.
If I was Amazon I'd be more worried about self-driving cars. Self-driving cars will make natural delivery vehicles. If Google partnered with local retailers to provide check-out via wallet and delivery via automated cars, it would disrupt more than just Amazon. Google has all of the nascent building blocks in place: Google Wallet, Google Shopping Express, Google Shopping, Google Maps with StreetView for routing, auto…
It's hard for me to see it unfold this way.
If I was Amazon I'd be more worried about self-driving cars. Self-driving cars will make natural delivery vehicles. If Google partnered with local retailers to provide check-out via wallet and delivery via automated cars, it would disrupt more than just Amazon. Google has all of the nascent building blocks in place: Google Wallet, Google Shopping Express, Google Shopping, Google Maps with StreetView for routing, auto…
> Self-driving cars will make natural delivery vehicles. Are you sure about that? Self-Driving cars are currently a very limited use case. They drive, but they haven't shown to be very adept at more anomalous behavior that humans can do, such as following detour signs, following traffic officer signaling at intersections, or finding parking spots in locations where they are unlikely to be towed. Furthermore, when you…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first paragraph is fairly easily solved with data. When self driving cars are common, there will no doubt be police databases with information about detours and parking etc. Given that, they will do a much better job than humans trying to find and read signs. The other parts of delivery are more of a problem. But remember at one time we thought it was necessary to have humans pump gas, operate elevators, and dis…
You are limiting your thinking to one type of solution. You also forgot the one thing that will trump all this, the human mind. A criminal mind would easily be able to rip off all the goods in a situation with driver-less cars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mail order catalogs never offered the opportunity to transcend the experience at a store. Digital experiences do theoretically offer that possibility. One example is using virtual augmented reality to see how that shoe rack will look in you're home, how does it combines with your wall and floor colors, etc. And this "digital better than real" has already started todat. Some high quality furniture retailers or hotels(…
I agree that web sites do more than mail order did. And can do more in the future. But the fundamental similarity is there in the convenient to buy / don't get to physically interact / slow to arrive vs having to go to a specific place / get to physically interact / walk out with the item you want minutes later. Also I remember my mother taking out a catalog, putting the picture of the thing she wanted in the place s…
2. don't get to physically interact - most products don't need physical interaction , just visual one. And there's haptic feedback tech if needed.
3. slow to arrive - online is improving(1 day shipping, maybe better for a fee) and will be good enough for most cases.
And remember:store depend on volumes to pay the rent and keep the lights on. Once online takes enough market share from them, they'll might collapse under their own weight. Some even start to see this happening in financial statements of big retailers.
It is worthwhile to pay attention to history. Internet shopping has a good historical analog. Mail order catalogs. It took a long time for things to settle down, but eventually everyone wound up with both mailorder and retail outlets. Even the 800 pound gorilla of mailorder, Sears Roebuck, became a hybrid. It took decades before they opened their first store, but today it is mostly known as a chain of department stor…
Mail order catalogs never offered the opportunity to transcend the experience at a store. Digital experiences do theoretically offer that possibility. One example is using virtual augmented reality to see how that shoe rack will look in you're home, how does it combines with your wall and floor colors, etc. And this "digital better than real" has already started todat. Some high quality furniture retailers or hotels(…
Mail-order catalogs historically played a very important part in the life of rural Americans. You could even buy a house via mail order.
Even when it became possible to travel to a store easily, mail order catalogs still offered one thing that stores didn't: time.
You could spend hours, even days poring over your catalog, analyzing and obsessing. Every kid assembled his Christmas wish list from the Sears Christmas catalog, even urban kids.
> Ouch, this is a really sad comment on Harvard these days; I'd be ashamed if a 14 year old made this qualitative vrs quantitative category mistake. (Which you since fixed, but please - it should never have been written).
Try looking into GOOGs shipping network, and compare it against AMZNs. Since we have long term data on AMZNs model (including $775 mil on a robot production facility):
1) Is GOOG outsourcing or doing this internally?
1a) If not, who are they using?
1b) If they are, where is the spend in their yearly budget reports? (Not seeing it)
2) Can they match the coverage that AMZN has?
3) Can they match the volume that AMZN has?
4) Can they hope to catch up before AMZN makes the robot jump it's planning?
And so on.
You're almost an adult - try to analyze the world a little closer, you're allegedly the elite of America.
Is HN really this naive? This is terrible, if this was from an Oxford or Cambridge student - well, sorry, I'd hope they couldn't produce this level of immature nonsense.
And yes, I suspect you'll "down vote" - but sometimes a short sharp slap should be required.
Oh, and the heavy use of trackers is both intrusive and unnecessary for a private site. You're not providing any service, barring selling yourself, which should again make you pause at the "whys" of using the trackers you are.