3 ms·

>Grocery stores (and all other brick-and-mortars) spend tons and tons of money and effort specifically arranging their stores And if I don't like Tesco I can g

>Grocery stores (and all other brick-and-mortars) spend tons and tons of money and effort specifically arranging their stores And if I don't like Tesco I can go to Asda. If Tesco won't sell my product I can try and sell it to Sainsbury's or Waitrose. The equivalent with Amazon is "If I don't like Walmart, there is some guy with a market stall selling fish, another with apples, a store 5 miles away that has carrots...". Or even, "Tescos won't buy my carrots so I will just drive them to every person myself". I have said it a few times, you can't be the marketplace and sell through that marketplace. Imagine finding the NYSE were trading shares, and were giving themselves 30ms advantage over everyone else (if you can't imagine, have a browse of the Cryptocurrency markets). Imagine a commodities market who own 90% of the oil themselves, and price themselves into every order (maybe onions...).

ksec 6y ago
Financial market is regulated and hence you dont that conflict of interest. They are also there to prevent anything catastrophic from happening. Selling Commodities in Retail isn't the same.
tshaddox 6y ago
Where do you draw the line between "marketplace" and "retail store?" For the NYSE it seems fairly clear, but in retail it seems less so. Nearly every widespread retail store I know of either sells primary a multitude of other company's products but also has some store brand options, or primarily sells their own branded items but also sells other company's products in areas where they don't have a first-party offering.
philwelch 6y ago
If you don't like Amazon you can try Walmart.com. And hey--if I click on "Household Essentials" on Walmart.com, there's a "Brands We Love" section, with the first brand being Great Value, the Walmart store brand.
shostack 6y ago
Not sure if you realized how ironic your NYSE comment was given semi recent news... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyse-jeffrey-c-sprecher-kelly-loeffler-sold-company-stock-ahead-of-coronavirus-market-meltdown/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyse-jeffrey-c-sprecher-kelly-l...
Terretta 6y ago
> you can’t be the marketplace and sell through that marketplace To be competitive, you can and you should. Amazon is a platform company. Platforms commoditize the complements. They didn’t have toys, so partner Toys’R’Us, didn’t have shoes, so partner Zappos, etc. As the platform, platforms observe transactions, such that through time, they can value complements and decide to co-exist, acquire, or compete. This is by now a well-known strategy. Rabbit hole: https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement
- greyhair 6y ago
  Just as long as, being Zappos, if you sell through Amazon, expect Amazon branded shoes a couple months to years down the road.

ksec 6y ago

Financial market is regulated and hence you dont that conflict of interest. They are also there to prevent anything catastrophic from happening. Selling Commodities in Retail isn't the same.

tshaddox 6y ago

Where do you draw the line between "marketplace" and "retail store?" For the NYSE it seems fairly clear, but in retail it seems less so. Nearly every widespread retail store I know of either sells primary a multitude of other company's products but also has some store brand options, or primarily sells their own branded items but also sells other company's products in areas where they don't have a first-party offering.

philwelch 6y ago

If you don't like Amazon you can try Walmart.com. And hey--if I click on "Household Essentials" on Walmart.com, there's a "Brands We Love" section, with the first brand being Great Value, the Walmart store brand.

shostack 6y ago

Not sure if you realized how ironic your NYSE comment was given semi recent news... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyse-jeffrey-c-sprecher-kelly-loeffler-sold-company-stock-ahead-of-coronavirus-market-meltdown/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyse-jeffrey-c-sprecher-kelly-l...

Terretta 6y ago

> you can’t be the marketplace and sell through that marketplace To be competitive, you can and you should. Amazon is a platform company. Platforms commoditize the complements. They didn’t have toys, so partner Toys’R’Us, didn’t have shoes, so partner Zappos, etc. As the platform, platforms observe transactions, such that through time, they can value complements and decide to co-exist, acquire, or compete. This is by now a well-known strategy. Rabbit hole: https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement

greyhair 6y ago
Just as long as, being Zappos, if you sell through Amazon, expect Amazon branded shoes a couple months to years down the road.