Amazon "Invades" College Campus With Media Center (businessinsider.com) 59
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon opened its first media center on a college campus, including couches, conference tables and TVs with game controllers, as well as a full-time Amazon staffer and a package pickup station. Since 40% of the boxes delivered to Penn are from Amazon, it will be installed in one of the dining halls, according to CNET, offering Amazon Prime members same-day or next-day delivery for more than 3 million items, from textbooks to toothpaste. Amazon already has pickup points on five college campuses, and hopes to add five more by the end of the year, in an effort to compete with 748 college bookstores run by Barnes and Noble.
One analyst told CNET, "They just want to hook you when you're 20."
One analyst told CNET, "They just want to hook you when you're 20."
But if only 30% were from Amazon (Score:1)
They'd put in a laundry room?
Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised only 40% of packages come from Amazon. Students are already hooked. I'd imagine most of the other 60% comes from clothing stores that refuse to market through Amazon and I'm sure Amazon has a plan to assimilate them.
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Unless things have changed Drastically since I went to college, the BULK of college students are poor. Buying things from amazon are not high on their priority list. When you are robbed blind by the college for overpriced tuition, overpriced housing, and obscenemy overpriced textbooks... you dont have money for things from Amazon.com
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Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds like the book publishers and their complicit teachers merely didn't manage to plug the used book loophole in your particular case.
Usually, the only difference between textbook editions is that they shuffle and renumber the problems at the end of each chapter. So you borrow the latest edition from a friend, and photocopy the problem sets. Then you can use the old book for learning, and the photocopies for homework.
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Uh, the best way to save on textbooks is to order them THROUGH Amazon!
Overpriced textbooks, yes, but Amazon usually has a good discount over the bookstore. In fact, I think when
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I don't know where the expression originates, but it holds true: "The market is a game all must be required to play, but none may be permitted to win." Or something like that. Every company strives to gain market share, but the system only works so long as no-one actually achieves dominance.
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Sounds like Ginsberg's theorem on the Laws of Thermodynamics:
1st Law: You can't win.
2nd Law: You can't break even.
3rd Law: You can't quit the game.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
the system only works so long as no-one actually achieves dominance.
Amazon has no lock on the market. If another site offers products 2% cheaper, people will switch. Amazon undercuts their competition through cost control and economy of scale, not through monopoly power.
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No pretty much amazon undercut the competition through tax avoidance. With the VATMOSS scheme in place in Europe it's quite common that Amazon are not the cheapest. Or the most convenient.
I get bulky and heavy groceries delivered by Sainsbury's (UK supermarket of which there are a few that deliver all with about the same level of service), because the 1 hour timeslots are super convenient. For more niche items, ebay (or Aliexpress for REALLY niche items) shops are the best bet, there's a far far wider range
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How is another competitor supposed to compete when Amazon already has economy of scale? It's very hard to displace an incumbent market leader.
Re: Not a surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not really. It kept Apple alive, but not much more.
Maybe a quarter of the school labs I saw from the late 80s to mid-90s were Macs. (Keep in mind that the computer market was much more diverse back then.) Most school Mac "labs" consisted of four computers, because that's all they could afford, even with heavy discounts. Outside of school, my circle of about a dozen nerd friends only included one Mac guy until the early 2000s. I knew of only one business, an advertising firm, that used Macs, and they only ha
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
"They just want to hook you when you're 20."
As does Apple, who sells their computers on campus at 10-20% less than retail.
As does Microsoft, who routinely gives much of their software away for free to students.
As does Google, who offers Google Apps for Education to pretty much any college that wants it.
As does every cereal manufacturer - no, wait, they're trying to hook you while you're still a little kid.
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"They just want to hook you when you're 20."
...
...
...
... you know ... try to make that happen? So what?
As does Apple
As does Microsoft
As does Google
As does Code Pink, as does Black Lives Matter, as does every other political/social movement. So what? Why shouldn't everybody and every organization that considers itself to be more successful if it has more interest from more people
Maybe one of Amazon's competitors, which offers the same sort of services and huge range of products with similar pricing and delivery should do exactly the same thing. Oh, right - nobody else has bothered to do grow a competing business yet. As does every cereal manufacturer - no, wait, they're trying to hook you while you're still a little kid.
Exclusivity (Score:2)
A package pickup point? Like mobile phone antennas: more useful the more there are. Preferably nearby.
But one that exclusively caters to one company X? Not good. Sure, a big % of packages may be theirs. But what about the rest? And who's to say where company X will be in a couple of years? If it only does 10% of packages by then, pickup point for company X wouldn't be so useful anymore. A shared pickup point for <any companies' shipments> would be, though.
So summary has it right. Smells a lot lik
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Isn't this an unfair advantage.. (Score:1)
I'm not surprised by anything the shallow corporatism pushes in the USA any more, it always has a subversive agenda. You know the CEO's of Amazon are just tapping their fingers together and cackling with glee at the captive audience of kids they can brainwash.
"They just want to hook you when you're 20." (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike all the fast-food outlets and vending machines all over most campuses, and the businesses and Scientologists competing for the real estate right across the street.
Re:"They just want to hook you when you're 20." (Score:5, Funny)
20? That's leaving it a bit late.
Yours sincerely,
The Jesuits.
Students still read BOOKS?! (Score:2)
Surely not...
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At this point I think Amazon considers actual books a sideline. Textbooks, on the other hand, are more of a required artefact to prove you have made your sacrifice at the alter of consumerism, than something intended to share knowledge.
Amazon is Wal-Mart (Score:2, Insightful)
I left America in 2012, came back in 2016 to find that Amazon is pretty much the new Wal-Mart. I really hate buying anything off Amazon now.
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what does "Amazon is the new wal-mart" mean? Are you saying it's not cool to shop at amazon or something that you're just too smart for that?
what are you even trying to say?
maybe someday Amazon will be available outside the us?
is wal-mart available outside the us?
what is your point?
Flame/click bait? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Invades"? "They want to hook you"? Really?
How is this different from any other retailer that opens up a shop on or near campus? An "invasion" implies that they're unwelcome interlopers forcing themselves in. If 40% of the packages coming into the school are already being ordered from Amazon, it's more like a significant portion of the student body has invited them in. And invoking the tobacco industry is sleazy sensationalism, and totally un-called for. They're not pushing an addictive and deadly drug onto an unwitting populace. They're providing a more convenient way to buy stuff you'd be buying anyway.
Amazon State Campuse ® (Score:1)
We've come full circle (Score:2)
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Putting the "retail" back into "non retail" sales. Seriously wtf - how does this add any value?
Uh, how about the website where you can choose from a massive range of products (beyond the dreams of any old-school mail order catalog, let alone an actual store) and pick them up the next day?
Sure, you could order books (and not a lot else) from a regular bookstore if you knew exactly what you want and didn't mind paying a premium price and waiting a week or so...
...and from Amazon's POV, at a university you've got a large, captive audience of potentially valuable customers, many of whom might otherwi
Great report Cnet! (Score:2)
One analyst told us "They just want to hook you when you're 20!"
On a serious note, why is this even an iss
BN = Campus Stores, not 'Book' Stores (Score:2)
Barnes and Noble, in my experience, does not run book stores but campus stores.
Except at the beginning of the semester, there are no books available for sale at my BN-run mid-major store.
Well, there is an ignored rack of faculty-authored books....
Success! (Score:2)
Amazon was going to succeed because it didn't need to have inventory...
no wait, Amazon will succeed because it only needs one large warehouse...
no wait, Amazon will succeed because even though it needs many warehouses, it can outsource distribution...
no wait, Amazon will succeed because even though it needs its own robot distribution network, it will have warehouses in every major city, same day delivery and brick and mortar stores and lounges where you can pick up stuff...
no wait, Amazon will succeed even
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Amazon, by any reasonable metric, IS succeeding. Many of their businesses make more than adequate profit margins (especially their cloud business), and Amazon's business strategy is to grow into as many markets as possible and to take advantage of vertical integration. Amazon is effectively the publisher, the store, and the printing press when they sell you self published books to read on your kindle. They even effectively are the designers of that printing press - they write the Amazon PC software, desi
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LMFTFY
Only on of their businesses make more than adequate profit margins (namely their cloud business)
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Sort of. Yes, their retail store is basically a Wall Street funded charity, operating at about 3% profit. On the other side of things, Walmart isn't doing any better. Retail is a race to the bottom.
Not just Penn State (Score:1)
I was on a recent college tour with my son. UMass, RIT, Purdue and Penn State all have these centers. They make it very convenient to pick up from and return items to Amazon. They also support textbook rentals. Purdue claims to have had the first Amazon center. Just Google "Amazon @".
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Ok, it's UPenn, not Penn State. But this has apparently been around for a while at other schools:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/am... [wsj.com]