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I think it makes sense. When you're small, you don't have a lot of power. If you create CodyStore tomorrow and do things I don't like, I'll just ignore you.
by mdasen 7y ago
I think it makes sense. When you're small, you don't have a lot of power. If you create CodyStore tomorrow and do things I don't like, I'll just ignore you. When you become as large as Amazon, you start crowding out competition and so even if I don't like some of Amazon's actions, I have no choice - I end up doing business with them regardless of my personal feelings.
Plus, as you get bigger, you start looking at how you can marginally increase your growth. You go from "just make people happy" to "we could probably exclude a lot of low-margin items from Prime shipping and not see cancelations while improving our profits". You start trying to tie things together so that if people want one part of your experience, they need to accept other parts. You start trying to figure out how to optimize your labor cost, potentially in ways that aren't great for your workers. You start getting a lot of people that can improve the company in ways that aren't necessarily evil, but aren't exactly friendly. By this time, people don't really have an alternative.
I mean, a lot of people loved Walmart when it was new. It was this all-in-one store with great prices. Over time, competing businesses were crowded out of the market by Walmart and customers had less choice. It also meant that retail labor had less choice with Walmart becoming a greater percentage of the jobs. It also meant that businesses selling things like TVs had less choice and Walmart could pressure them.
I think power is ultimately pretty toxic. Amazon has succeeded in part because it's really good at what it does. However, another part of its success is the power it exerts on competitors, over labor, over suppliers, and over customers. Small companies just never have power to exert so they can never seem that unfriendly. Unfriendly small companies just cease to exist or at least can be ignored. Unfriendly large companies can use their power to force a lot of things to try and keep their throne.
- cody3222 7y agoThese are really good points and I agree with the idea of what you're saying 100%. I also agree with the specifics of Amazon and where they have clearly gone past the "nice guy" line. I would love to hear if there are examples of companies that have "done everything right" that are still loved. I feel like there is a natural journalistic hatred towards anyone very large (and sometimes it is totally deserved). Perhaps there are no pure large companies and that's why...or perhaps most business decisions are tradeoffs where either side won't please everyone and that just opens up room for attack. I really don't know the answer (even if we agree that Amazon deserves the negative press).