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A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

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Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#71

Post by thbr99 »

tgtweak wrote: post #46
brushfoot wrote: post #41

I'd love to see an Amazon lookalike with solely local results. I.e., local stores list their inventories, accept payment, and do delivery. Does anything like that exist? Marketing and integration would be hurdles: You'd have to convince businesses to integrate, and you'd have to become a household name to consumers. You'd have to write integrations for the menagerie of systems small businesses use, or else become key…

Lightspeed (POS) is well positioned to offer this. They have all inventories, prices, skus, supplier prices (cost) and the scale to logistically implement this via the store management software they already have all merchants running. You could order via their single portal, have it fulfilled from the nearest store, and then dispatch delivery and track it all in one place. Would be a one-click enable for most merchan…

Marketing speak. Do you work there ?

Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#72

Post by thbr99 »

I would never buy anything from this sort of site especially if done by the Québec government. They should try to fix their Senior Home Covid-19 situation due to lack of healthcare workers because of their absurd healthcare system rules unlike rest of Canada. The premier of Quebec CAQ govt. is populist and wants to throw some raw meat to his voter base. The next one will be immigrant bashing.

Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#73

Post by thbr99 »

ckdarby wrote: post #4
Angostura wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me how creating a directory of local online businesses in any way makes anything "extremely complicated"

> first step It starts with this and then could become if you're not apart of the list you're going to have "more problems". What other province is doing this? In my opinion this makes it more complicated already. It always starts with a first step, Bill 101 exists to protect the French culture. Now people actively use it as an exploit against companies. I've known people who use Bill 101 to have documents provided i…

I got the Covid-19 care guide in my mail box by the Québec government in French only because of Bill 101. Language politics trumps even in case of emergency communications in Québec.

Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#74

Post by Sytten »

Setting aside the Quebec bashing comments in this thread. Here is a TLDR of what I said when it came out:

1. There is less information on that website than Google Maps, it is pretty much useless right now. I am convinced the investigators of the project are sincere, but they are disconnected from reality (Alexandre Taillefer is a failure as a business man, but he has friends in high places)

2. They spend 300k$ on this project which is made by an non-profit. This is nowhere near enough to pretend you want to compete with Amazon. This is due to incompetence of bureaucrats in the government who have no clue how to build a software project.

3. What they could have done is a partnership with Shopify since they already built all the functionalities (search, payment, shipping, etc.) and create a real platform that looks and feel like 2020 not 1995.... But its the Not Invented Here syndrome that stroke again.

4. What people want is speed of delivery and low cost of shipping. I am simplify not waiting a week for my package to arrive via a shitty service like UPS where I need to be home to receive it. I am also proposing the government subsidies the shipping cost for small retailers to make it more appealing to buy from them.

5. Another idea I had would be to create a competing product to Amazon prime which would combine a subscription to tou.tv, free shipping on this Amazon-like website and an audio streaming service for Quebec music, I am 100% sure it would be a hit.

In summary, we have to stop the "magical" thinking that if we create a broken website in bootstrap that feels like its 1995 all over again we are going to save local businesses and make people shop in local stores. We have to build something that is modern and appeal to customers. But considering the people they have on board, I doubt it will ever happen...

Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#75

Post by LatteLazy »

I do 90% of my shopping online usually. Right now, amazon (and Union coffee) are the only working online retailers in the UK as far as I can tell. Every other online store is shut except for takeaways.

Thank god for Amazon. If I relied to local stores I'd be sat here with no electricity in half the house.

Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#76

Post by rcthompson »

andreilys wrote: post #69
mgbmtl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you mention, shopping on Amazon has become pretty horrible. I often shop local (faster, more convenient), but discoverability is a big problem, and I hate having to phone to enquire about their open hours, because their Google listing is never up to date.

I’m confused as to how local is faster/more convenient, yet it requires you to pick up a phone due to an outdated listing? With Amazon, if I see I’m running low on rice, I can say “Alexa order rice” and I get rice on my doorstep in 3 days based on my previous rice order history. Doesn’t get more convenient than that.

You can't imagine how one could possibly acquire rice in less than 3 days?

Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#77

Post by schnischna »

I don't understand that kind of thing: the government is presumably elected by the people. Why would the people want the government to fight a business that they could voluntarily avoid, without any government intervention whatsoever?

I mean the government represents what the people want. The people apparently want to buy at local businesses, rather than at Amazon. Why don't they simply do it?

Or if they actually DO want to shop at Amazon, why would they want the government to prevent them from doing it?

Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#79

Post by chr1 »

schnischna wrote: post #77

I don't understand that kind of thing: the government is presumably elected by the people. Why would the people want the government to fight a business that they could voluntarily avoid, without any government intervention whatsoever? I mean the government represents what the people want. The people apparently want to buy at local businesses, rather than at Amazon. Why don't they simply do it? Or if they actually DO…

Government represents what the people want, just as much as a browser bundled with OS represents what people want.

That is people do not have any way to say what they want and what trade-offs they are willing to accept, they have to choose between two or three horrible bundled packages, which end up doing things only small minority wants.

As long as we do not have a way to vote for individual policies, and to trade our support for a policy with other people we are doomed to have governments that do more harm than good.

Re: A fight against Amazon becomes a state matter in Quebec

#80

Post by p2t2p »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #16

This seems kind of doomed to fail. Amazon is appealing because it provides a good customer experience: good prices, fast shipping, wide variety of products, responsive customer service, etc. More local businesses fail to compete because they mostly offer the same things with worse prices and experience. It's one thing to appeal to people's sense of civic responsibility for the environment, another thing entirely for…

So last week in Australia I wanted to stock pile some number of my favorite pens. Amazon - yeah, you'll get it some 3 weeks later. Local Officeworks - no problem, we'll bring 'em pens tomorrow. And they did. So I dunno, I usually buy stuff on Amazon that I can't get locally.
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