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There has never been a grocery store that has had the logistical dominance that Amazon does right now. In fact, for much of the 20th century, retail and wholes
by legutierr 6y ago
There has never been a grocery store that has had the logistical dominance that Amazon does right now. In fact, for much of the 20th century, retail and wholesale distribution operations were legally obligated to be owned by distinct entities under anti-trust law, specifically to prevent the emergence of a combination like what we see now with Amazon.
This is not a one-off for Amazon. New products need to sell through Amazon to get access to consumers without paying through the nose for that access; they can't be cost-competitive otherwise (close parallel here to the SO monopoly). Amazon frequently cherry-picks the most successful new products that they think they can manufacture themselves.
This is bad for innovation in the consumer products space, because it kills the incentive that independent entrepreneurs have to innovate. Why innovate if Amazon is going to capture all your profits once you are successful? What branded grocery-store products ever face the same quandary due to the existence of similar white-label products being sold in the same store?
In an environment where anti-trust principles were being enforced against Amazon, they would have listed the original product under the "camera bag" headline, increasing their sales, instead of stealing their concept and making it harder for them to build a sustainable business.
- bsder 6y ago> There has never been a grocery store that has had the logistical dominance that Amazon does right now. I challenge you on this. I think that both Sears and A&P had Amazon level monopolies for quite a long time.
- r00fus 6y agoI'm not some newbie but who was A&P? Never heard of them. Regardless I'd disagree about the reach of Sears vs. Amazon. They kinda look the same as a retailer scope (Sears owned phone-order, Amazon monopolized online), but that's where the analogy ends.
- cafard 6y agoAtlantic and Pacific is what it stood for. Wikipedia says it shut down in 2015.
- mikestew 6y agoOn top of the fact that it's probably been fifty years since I've stepped foot in an A&P grocery. They were hardly a monopoly even then. I'm truly surprised that they were still a going entity in 2015.
- perl4ever 6y agoI don't think I've ever been in one and couldn't have told you what states they were in. Nevertheless I heard of them somewhere, so I don't think they're the most obscure chain.
- mikestew 6y ago"Not obscure" is a loooooong way from "monopoly", which was the original argument somewhere upthread. Wikipedia says that at their peak, A&P had 10% of U. S. grocery sales. That's not even iPhone territory, let alone monopoly.
- bsder 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Atlantic_%26_Pacific_Tea_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Atlantic_%26_Pacific... > In 1930, A&P, now the world's largest retailer, reached $2.9 billion in sales ($44.4 billion today) with 16,000 stores.
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoAntitrust laws don't exist to build a sustainable business on somebody else's storefront. And in the bygone past, grocers delivered themselves when there were far fewer of them than there are Walmarts dominating small towns.