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The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

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Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#71

Post by ortusdux »

rahilb wrote: post #70

Once upon a time I worked at an ebook company. We were naively trying to compete with Amazon (i.e. we sold every book we could get our hands on). Sometimes we'd negotiate a deal with a publisher, and slash the price of a book to a point where no one involved in the transaction was making money, sometimes we and the publisher would be losing money... Without fail within an hour the list price of the content on Amazon…

I once read the account of a student who gamed the bots sellers use to competitively price their products in order to get cheap textbooks. The person made a dummy seller account, setup a bot, and listed the books they needed. As they lowered their listing prices, the real sellers' bots auto-price matched. The student then bought all their books at ~1/10th the original price, canceled any orders they may have received, and deleted their store.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#72

Post by ergothus »

rahilb wrote: post #70

Once upon a time I worked at an ebook company. We were naively trying to compete with Amazon (i.e. we sold every book we could get our hands on). Sometimes we'd negotiate a deal with a publisher, and slash the price of a book to a point where no one involved in the transaction was making money, sometimes we and the publisher would be losing money... Without fail within an hour the list price of the content on Amazon…

A friend of mine once claimed that Amazon could sell at cost and still profit - they'd charge the customer for an item immediately, but have 30 or 60 days until they had to pay the supplier, so the interest on the payment in the meantime was profit. Not a lot on a $15 collection of toilet paper (for example), but multiple by the number of Amazon customers...

Of course, that skips the costs of Amazon staffing and infrastructure, and I'm sure Amazon sells most items above cost (and potentially some below), but I took it as a good example of how the scale involved meant that few can compete with Amazon.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#73

Post by wikibob »

trome wrote: post #56
ftlio wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother used to be a scan coordinator at a grocery store. We have been talking about this eventually happening for over a decade. Although based on her experience, the infrastructure for even letting her know what pricing should be requires a major IT overhaul as well.

The cost and wiring to power eink displays is too much, due to the USD being fairly stable, prices don't change daily/hourly, which would help eink signage for shelving make sense. You essentially either need a power drop to each section of shelving, or you have to replace batteries on every sign through your store every X months or years.

Actually eInk price displays, known as Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL's) [0] are extensive deployed in many retailers.

You can see the labels available from Pricer, one of the big players in the space: http://www.pricer.com/en/Solutions/

France retailer Carrefour uses ESLs in all their stores, for every SKU. They use ESL's from Pricer who says Carrefour uses 12 million labels, deployed in 2004, and they are updated via in ceiling infrared transmitters. [1]

ESL's are also common in Germany. And in the USA some Whole Foods use them.

This random blog claims "The ESL market is estimated to grow from 186.5 million dollars to 399.6 million dollars by 2020" [2]

Ses-imagotag showcases some interesting applications of their tags including manufacturing [3] and office use.

Finally a list of companies in the space [4]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_shelf_label

[1] http://www.pricer.com/en/PressRoom/Case-Studies/Electronic-S...

[2] http://www.retailintelligencelab.com/blog/2016/11/24/the-ris...

[3] http://www.ses-imagotag.com/en/benefits/

[4] https://iot-daily.com/2015/03/19/best-electronic-shelf-label...

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#74

Post by jrullman »

downandout wrote: post #39

I try to put this on all WSJ articles that make the front page. Here is a direct link to this story that will auto-kill the paywall: https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fa... If you want a draggable bookmarklet that will bypass the paywall for all WSJ articles, go here: http://salzeko.com/wsj/ It would be nice if HN would make a change to their link submission code so that it automatically chang…

This Chrome extension does much the same thing — https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xray/dgkdfehohjdbm...

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#75

Post by wikibob »

wikibob wrote: post #73
trome wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost and wiring to power eink displays is too much, due to the USD being fairly stable, prices don't change daily/hourly, which would help eink signage for shelving make sense. You essentially either need a power drop to each section of shelving, or you have to replace batteries on every sign through your store every X months or years.

Actually eInk price displays, known as Electronic Shelf Labels (ESL's) [0] are extensive deployed in many retailers. You can see the labels available from Pricer, one of the big players in the space: http://www.pricer.com/en/Solutions/ France retailer Carrefour uses ESLs in all their stores, for every SKU. They use ESL's from Pricer who says Carrefour uses 12 million labels, deployed in 2004, and they are updated via…

This is pretty awesome. The system is smarter than I thought when I saw it in-store.

Since the tags are networked with infrared, they can flash on command. For example when store employees are trying to find a particular product for stocking, or retrieving it for a delivery order (example safeway.com delivery).

http://www.pricer.com/en/Solutions/Store-Manage-Solutions/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrtO8qVmezM

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#76

Post by discodave »

ergothus wrote: post #72
rahilb wrote: post #70

Once upon a time I worked at an ebook company. We were naively trying to compete with Amazon (i.e. we sold every book we could get our hands on). Sometimes we'd negotiate a deal with a publisher, and slash the price of a book to a point where no one involved in the transaction was making money, sometimes we and the publisher would be losing money... Without fail within an hour the list price of the content on Amazon…

A friend of mine once claimed that Amazon could sell at cost and still profit - they'd charge the customer for an item immediately, but have 30 or 60 days until they had to pay the supplier, so the interest on the payment in the meantime was profit. Not a lot on a $15 collection of toilet paper (for example), but multiple by the number of Amazon customers... Of course, that skips the costs of Amazon staffing and infr…

> but have 30 or 60 days until they had to pay the supplier, so the interest on the payment in the meantime was profit

That's a very common tactic in retail. Amazon didn't invent it, even if they did lean on it heavily.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#77

Post by i336_ »

ortusdux wrote: post #71
rahilb wrote: post #70

Once upon a time I worked at an ebook company. We were naively trying to compete with Amazon (i.e. we sold every book we could get our hands on). Sometimes we'd negotiate a deal with a publisher, and slash the price of a book to a point where no one involved in the transaction was making money, sometimes we and the publisher would be losing money... Without fail within an hour the list price of the content on Amazon…

I once read the account of a student who gamed the bots sellers use to competitively price their products in order to get cheap textbooks. The person made a dummy seller account, setup a bot, and listed the books they needed. As they lowered their listing prices, the real sellers' bots auto-price matched. The student then bought all their books at ~1/10th the original price, canceled any orders they may have received…

That sounds heartwarmingly difficult to police...

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#78

Post by ScalaFan »

discodave wrote: post #76
ergothus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine once claimed that Amazon could sell at cost and still profit - they'd charge the customer for an item immediately, but have 30 or 60 days until they had to pay the supplier, so the interest on the payment in the meantime was profit. Not a lot on a $15 collection of toilet paper (for example), but multiple by the number of Amazon customers... Of course, that skips the costs of Amazon staffing and infr…

> but have 30 or 60 days until they had to pay the supplier, so the interest on the payment in the meantime was profit That's a very common tactic in retail. Amazon didn't invent it, even if they did lean on it heavily.

Some credit card companies do exactly that. It is an old game.

Re: The High-Speed Trading Behind an Amazon Purchase

#79

Post by thinkloop »

supergreg wrote: post #68
Animats wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not. Dropping the prices on the wrapped sandwiches after lunch hour would be useful to clear out the unsold inventory.

In my grocery store they give you 50% discount after 8pm. No need to change price labels.

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