4 ms·
A few points in refutation. I see Amazon as far ahead of Walmart in all ways that promise growth: 1) Walmart may be the biggest retailer in the US, but they d
by randcraw 9y ago
A few points in refutation. I see Amazon as far ahead of Walmart in all ways that promise growth:
1) Walmart may be the biggest retailer in the US, but they don't have half of the US homes as subscribers. Amazon Prime does. I doubt Walmart.com attracts any where near as many e-tail visitors as Amazon, and I suspect the gap is widening.
2) Amazon is decades ahead of Walmart in the online shopper experience. I grit my teeth each time I visit Walmart's website. It's slow and ugly and very clumsy to navigate or search. And it hasn't gotten better after years of this.
3) Walmart's products are mostly middle-to-down-market, even online, and that doesn't seem to have changed all that much even as they've grown their e-tail efforts. Try buying a nice watch or high-end stereo equipment there. No such ceiling applies to Amazon, probably because Amazon welcomes re-sellers (which can span all market niches), while Walmart doesn't.
So I think Walmart has a long way to go to compete equally with Amazon, and isn't a comparable threat as an all 'round monopoly.
And personally, I don't hate Amazon enough to object to a monopoly threat from them the way I do Walmart. I think ill-will does matter when it comes to federal action on anti-competition. If Microsoft were as despised as AT&T was in 1984, they would be in pieces today.
- dkrich 9y agoTry buying a nice watch or high-end stereo equipment there. No such ceiling applies to Amazon, probably because Amazon welcomes re-sellers (which can span all market niches), while Walmart doesn't. Ha- as it happens I just bought a nice watch, today, and after perusing the options on Amazon I found the same watch I was about to buy direct from the retailer. However after considering the number of knock-off items I've received from Amazon, I simply refused to trust that the watch was authentic, and ended up paying more for the peace of mind that I got from buying it direct from the manufacturer. Amazon's lack of quality control makes it impossible to trust them for expensive items that can be knocked off. It's funny that you say that Wal-Mart is middle-to-down market, because Amazon is where I buy my household staples and some consumer electronic items and cheap crap that I'm not overly concerned with the quality. Clothing, watches- pretty much anything of quality I look elsewhere. That said, I do buy clothing from Zappos, and I think Wal-Mart made a smart move to acquire Bonobos to make a serious move into high-end apparel.
- johnflan 9y agoWalmart also launched jet.com
- ticviking 9y ago> 3) Walmart's products are mostly middle-to-down-market, even online, and that doesn't seem to have changed all that much even as they've grown their e-tail efforts. Try buying a nice watch or high-end stereo equipment there. No such ceiling applies to Amazon, probably because Amazon welcomes re-sellers (which can span all market niches), while Walmart doesn't. Yes but I'm quite sure when I order something from walmart I'm getting the genuine article, not a knockoff dumped into the SKU bin by some shitty counterfitter
- syshum 9y ago>> Amazon welcomes re-sellers (which can span all market niches), while Walmart doesn't. This is false, You can sell things on walmart.com as a reseller https://marketplace.walmart.com/ https://marketplace.walmart.com/ There are not many resellers doing it, no where near as many as Amazon but many large online shops are embracing the Amazon Model, Newegg does it now, Walmart, and a few others. Amazon is also getting more aggressive with their resellers, putting in more restrictions, heavily favoring the Fulfilled by program where Amazon gets a larger cut, increase the number of blackout catagories, and increasing the number of items sold by Amazon directly which puts huge pricing pressure on Resellers that can not get the pricing amazon can. Several Niche and some larger brand have pulled out of Amazon completely in the last couple of years for these (and the counterfeiting problem) issues