Amazon Will Open 100 Retail Stores (businessinsider.com) 167
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Amazon plans to open "as many as 100" retail stores in shopping malls by the end of next year, according to Business Insider. The 300- to 500-square-foot stores will sell familiar Amazon hardware products like Kindles and Fire TV, "but the broader goal is to drive more traffic to Amazon's online store, as these devices make it easier to purchase items there" -- and to promote Amazon's Echo personal assistant.
Amazon stores have already quietly opened in 12 states, including six stores in California and more stores in New York, Texas, Virginia, and Massachusetts. But now the brick-and-mortar stores "have emerged from the test phase with a goal to expand and grow," according to one Amazon job posting, and Business Insider reports that new Amazon stores "are popping up almost every week in shopping malls across the country."
The article has pictures of the new Amazon stores, and points out that the company also experienced disappointing results from an earlier experiment with Amazon trucks.
Amazon stores have already quietly opened in 12 states, including six stores in California and more stores in New York, Texas, Virginia, and Massachusetts. But now the brick-and-mortar stores "have emerged from the test phase with a goal to expand and grow," according to one Amazon job posting, and Business Insider reports that new Amazon stores "are popping up almost every week in shopping malls across the country."
The article has pictures of the new Amazon stores, and points out that the company also experienced disappointing results from an earlier experiment with Amazon trucks.
Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:5, Interesting)
Best Buy is already the place you go to before you buy it cheaper on Amazon. This will kill nearby ones.
Re:Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:4, Insightful)
This just in: Retail stores like Best Buy do this thing called "price matching". Film at 11!
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Sometimes. And then I have to find a salesman, show them the price, argue them into it (as they try to claim they only price match brick and mortar), and deal with their hard sales and trying to talk me into buying a warranty. I'd rather just buy it on Amazon and not deal with their salesmen. Unless I absolutely want it today I'm not even going to ask them to match.
Re:Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes.
Nope, all the time. I've never once had a price match not accepted from online stores like Amazon, Newegg, etc. by Best Buy, Frys, etc.
And then I have to find a salesman, show them the price, argue them into it (as they try to claim they only price match brick and mortar), and deal with their hard sales and trying to talk me into buying a warranty. I'd rather just buy it on Amazon and not deal with their salesmen. Unless I absolutely want it today I'm not even going to ask them to match.
Nope, you simply walk up to the cashier, show them the price on Amazon and they price match. Every time I've done it it takes less than a minute at Best Buy. And I've done this at multiple locations.
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Yeah, just don't care. Buying on Amazon is still simpler, just doing that.
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Increasingly, you can get Prime Now if you want it the same day. Or if you can wait two business days, you can get it through Prime. Or you can get it with free shipping if there's no rush. Most importantly, this allows you to avoid the unpleasantness of having to walk into BBY
PLEASE do NOT open one here in My STATE... (Score:3)
I hope they do NOT open an Amazon store in my state.
If they do, then I'll have to pay fucking 9%+ sales tax on my amazon orders, and well......why would I really wanna buy from them as much then?
That savings and free shipping is what makes them so desirable right now, but add in that 9%-10% sales tax, and well, I don't see that much a reason to get everything from amazon
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Well at least your state will get the tax money. I find Amazon not that cheap any more. I rarely buy for the bargain. I buy for the selection. If I want a certain brand deodorant in a certain scent. Or my closest Asian market is a 90 mile round trip. Amazon is awesome.
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I think my state gets plenty of my money already.
I find Amazon has better prices on most things "I" like to get...especially without tax. Again, I have to pay 9%-10% at least on brick and mortar purchase.
That really adds up when you buy a n
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I hope they do NOT open an Amazon store in my state.
If they do, then I'll have to pay fucking 9%+ sales tax on my amazon orders, and well......why would I really wanna buy from them as much then?
That savings and free shipping is what makes them so desirable right now, but add in that 9%-10% sales tax, and well, I don't see that much a reason to get everything from amazon anymore.
See if your state has a "use tax" in addition to sales tax. Technically, I'm supposed to pay a use tax on everything I buy out of state (including online) for use in state. The use tax in my state is equal to the sales tax. If I don't pay the use tax, I am technically committing tax fraud and open myself up to an audit.
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Yes, it's fun playing Russian roulette with counterfeit products on Amazon!
Select Amazon as the seller, not a 3rd party. Chances of getting a fake with Amazon as a seller is much less than a 3rd party.
Not willing to put in the effort to do that? Then you deserve your Soppy Walkingman.
Re:Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:5, Informative)
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in which case you inform them "OK then I'll buy the same unit as model XYZ-65-99 from $vendor instead. Thank you for your time."
After they hear that enough times and units sold drops they will either listen or fold.
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"After they hear that enough times and units sold drops they will either listen or fold."
That sounds good in theory, but the "sales" people you tell that to have no decision making ability to make such changes.
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That sounds good in theory, but the "sales" people you tell that to have no decision making ability to make such changes.
And they usually don't care one way or another if an item is sold.
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But.. I've had friends who have worked at Worst Buy, as has my brother, and they all have told me that they hold regular meetings (often all-hands-on at 5:00am or 6:00am o.O - they're as bad as Sprawl*Mart reputedly is) and although they're not on commission the departments do have sales quotas. Presumably details such as feedback from customers is shared at such meetings and is(??? or should be!) shared higher up the food chain when they identify that #itemIdenticalToAmazonItemExceptForSKU) sales numbers a
Re:Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing I love more than escalating an argument through three managers. Sounds awesome.
And all for the privilege of lugging home on my own what I could have gotten delivered to my door.
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This actually started with Wallmart. When Wallmart started carrying electronics, they were demanding to be cheaper than their competitors. They used their strength as a retailer to force the vendors to make custom versions of their products to accomplish this. On printers, they would ship without ink, for computers they would have 30 or 60 day warranty instead of 1 or 2 years. For TVs, they may have had certain featured disabled (for example, DVI ports were there, but you couldn't tune to them).
MOST elect
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In case you haven't noticed, Apple is the most profitable company on the planet, so their user-hostile policies must be working. It helps to have a large cult of users happy to buy your crap no matter how badly you treat them (like with expensive proprietary connectors making it impossible for them to borrow their friends' cables to recharge their phones).
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It helps to have a large cult of users happy to buy your crap no matter how badly you treat them
This is a well known phenomenon. It's known as cognitive dissonance (as in: I must be suffering this pain for a reason, so it must be good).
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Maybe, but most of it seems to be marketing and branding, plus riding on past successes. Make your product look fancy, price it high, and people perceive it to have high value. Add in some successful history (when the iPhone came out in 2006, it really was a huge improvement over the competition, but Android phones quickly became serious competitors), and don't screw up too bad and people will keep buying your crap like lemmings.
Apple isn't the only one. BMW is pretty similar, with overpriced cars with o
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At least back when Jobs was in charge, Apple kept expanding its market by introducing new neat things. A cult of users can be useful to maintain a market, but it's not going to expand it. It's also hard to maintain a decent cult by mistreating the members, and Apple provides benefits in compatibility and ease of use that counterbalance problems that tend to matter mostly to techies.
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Huh? Apple doesn't give two shits about compatibility; they constantly do their own proprietary thing, like the Lightning connector. They seem to do just fine by mistreating their cult members, because those people are happy for it and rationalize it to themselves somehow. Maybe it'll eventually become a problem and their market will stop growing, but their profitability seems to be great so far.
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There's a way of looking at things I decided on long ago: when a person does something you think dumb or wrong, assume that there's reasons and try to figure out what they are. (They will often turn out not to be good reasons.) You'll figure out a lot of interesting things that way.
Instead, you see Apple customers doing things you wouldn't do, and rather than ask yourself why they do these things.you just attribute it to some vague Apple cult, whose members rationalize things you don't like. You'll u
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Why they're successful really isn't that hard to understand. Most of it comes down to marketing, along with their particular aesthetics, inertia/reputation, and people simply preferring the walled-garden experience where they're limited to whatever Apple tells them to do and want. For that last one, it's easy to understand: most people are followers, and like to be told what to do, especially if the person in authority seems to know what they're doing. Unlike Microsoft, for instance, with their absolutel
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Talking to another human being for 5 minutes is such an onerous task that you'd rather wait two days for something to show up in the mail?
I go to Best Buy (or even Walmart) *after* I look on Amazon, because they'll price match and because if I buy from them I won't have to wait for days before I can play with my new toys. Granted there is tax, but I just consider it a fee for super-expedited shipping.
Re: Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:2)
Depends on the item I'm purchasing, but yes. Especially when we're talking about best buy employees. Never has a good experience there.
Re:Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:4, Interesting)
You left out a bit there. Compare:
Versus:
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"Drive ten or fifteen minutes to the store"
I live in a small city, the nearest decent size mall is over an hours drive away.
and its about 3 hours to the MOA
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For some of us, it's worse. I have a Walmart about 5 minutes away, but for anything else it's more like a 40-minute drive.
It's a HUGE time savings for me to just order on Amazon or another online seller (these days, Amazon's prices aren't always the best so I make sure to look around), and then wait for it to arrive by USPS/FedEx.
It wouldn't be much better if I moved closer to town either; the traffic in the city is so bad that you're still looking at at least an hour just to go buy something even if you l
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I'll do my own comparison.
Amazon:
Search for item on website on a Sunday. Place order. Item appears on doorstep Monday or Tuesday while I'm at work.
Best Buy:
Search for item on website on a Sunday. Place order. Decide if I want it that day, which means a special trip driving to the store for in store pick-up. Decide if I want it Monday, which means a short detour on my way home from work for in-store pickup. Decide if I can wait until Tuesday and not have to drive to Best Buy and have it delivered to my
Re:Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:5, Informative)
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It's $49 before free shipping on Amazon in the US. Used to be $25- then bumped to $35. I do find myself buying less and less from Amazon every time they bump up their cut-off barrier for free shipping.
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Prime
Its worth it if you are a regular Amazon customer
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In some cases it's worth it even if you are not a regular Amazon customer. I found out that Amazon offers free Prime membership to college students. That came in handy for finding books for most classes and a couple movies for a literature class.
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Of course there is the whole, shop online, wait for delivery to the store and pick up at your convenience, it's called the click and mortar option. Why have a shop at the pick up location, spur of the moment purchases and why order online and pick up at store, problematic delivery drivers and neighbourhood thieves and you can actually check the item at the store prior to accepting it. Also if the package remains within the Amazon transport system, it can all travel in readily reusable plastic crates and th
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It's only $75 delivery fee if the electronic gadget comes with a giant cement block attached to it.
As a general rule, I ignore products that have superfluous cement blocks attached.
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I bought a TV on Amazon once that was a couple hundred $ in freight shipping (too large for standard parcel shippers).
The TV was not sold in any local stores. I didn't have a car at the time anyway so my options were pretty limited.
Re: Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:2)
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Odd. My FedEx distribution center is open until 8 P.M., and my UPS distribution center only hold-for-pickup handling once a day, at IIRC 11 P.M. (yes, P.M.), so neither should involve missing work unless you work a very strange shift.
Also, after the first notice, you can request redelivery within the same geographic region, so you can have them deliver it to your workplace instead of your home.
So yes, that's pretty badly exaggerated. :-)
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And even "signature required" generally allow you to sign the "sorry we missed you" note and they'll leave it the next day
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Charging a price someone is willing to pay is not "screwing over their regular customers". I suppose if there was no other option for said customer, it might be screwing them, but that's hardly the case.
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So Amazon it is.
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I went into a Best Buy for the first time in about a year a few weeks ago. I was amazed. Not-exaggerating, over 25% of the store was devoted to Samsung Phones, Another 30% devoted to various other phones. I was dumbfounded that they've been reduced to just a cell-phone store with a few other items here and there.
It's the same kind of feeling I get when I walk into sports/athletics stores and realize that they don't actually sell much sports equipment anymore, they're all just clothing stores now.
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Same reason I get my oil changes at walmart. Pay a little more but don't have to deal with some twat telling you that you need extra work that you don't actually need. The worst walmart does is try to sell you an air filter or some kind of engine cleaning fluid when you don't need either, but saying no once is enough.
Re: Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst walmart does is try to sell you an air filter or some kind of engine cleaning fluid when you don't need either,
Incorrect. The worst they will do is hire someone who either fails to make sure your oil drain plug is screwed-in all the way or else strips the threads.
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I've been having my oil changed at walmart for years and have yet to ever have anything like that happen. Besides, since when does anybody who changes your oil not work for minimum wage?
Re:Biggest effect will be on nearby Best Buys (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes. And then I have to find a salesman, show them the price, argue them into it (as they try to claim they only price match brick and mortar), and deal with their hard sales and trying to talk me into buying a warranty. I'd rather just buy it on Amazon and not deal with their salesmen. Unless I absolutely want it today I'm not even going to ask them to match.
In regards to Best Buy, I've had no problem price matching to major online stores (i.e. Amazon, Newegg, etc.) and I've had no problems with someone trying to talk me into a warranty (They ask at the register if I want the warranty, I say No, they complete my transaction). Of course, when I buy from Best Buy, I usually buy it online from BestBuy.com for pickup and then just go and pick it up. Why spend time in the store "browsing" if you don't have to?
The one reason why I still buy some electronics from the Best Buy retail store is for returns. It's a lot easier to return a 65" TV or an A/V AMP to a retail outlet than it is to ship it back to Amazon, etc. Yes, the online outlets have services that do pickup/delivery but I prefer to deal with retail outlet for these items.
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Best Buy is already the place you go to before you buy it cheaper on Amazon. This will kill nearby ones.
Hooray! Best buy is shit in literally every way. I can enumerate the ways if you like, but a wildcard should be sufficient.
Best Buy & Amazon are somewhat mutually exclus (Score:2)
DISCLAIMER: I'm Canadian, Best Buy bought up Futureshop so I don't know how much of "Canadian Style" Best Buy is actually Futureshop and vice versa
I went into Best Buy on Saturday with my mom (she wanted a composite extension cable, spoiler alert they suggested Amazon much to my amusement) anyway, I saw that they have a HUGE sections devoted to appliances, phones (and phone accessories yikes), laptops and LCD TVs but that was about it. They did have a shriveled, vestigial section for "movies" and "games" (a
Just as I predicted. (Score:5, Funny)
I told you the internet was a fad.
Everyone, all together now~ (Score:2)
It's the Ciiircle of Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiife
And it mooooooves us aaaaaallllll...
Bad Idea, Really Bad Idea (Score:5, Informative)
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Anyone Remember CompuAdd?? or Gateway??, not many do, but after being giants in computer sales on line they opened retail stores and it crippled them and cost them going out of business. Amazon needs to be extremely careful, what is that quote, "those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it".
Anyone Remember CompuAdd?? or Gateway??, not many do, but after being giants in computer sales on line they opened retail stores and it crippled them and cost them going out of business. Amazon needs to be extremely careful, what is that quote, "those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it".
Gateway had a number of problems when it went into retail. First and foremost the were a low coat seller and retail stores added costs at a time when prices were starting to drop. They spent a lot of money making stores look like farms complete with silos but you couldn't actually buy and walk out with it. You had to wait for it to be shipped. In addition, they were selling a product that was no different from what you could het right seay at other stores nor did they offer anything uniguevso beyond the nov
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Anyone Remember CompuAdd?? or Gateway??, not many do, but after being giants in computer sales on line they opened retail stores and it crippled them and cost them going out of business. Amazon needs to be extremely careful, what is that quote, "those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it".
This has nothing to do with making money selling Amazon devices. They likely lose some money on each device even before paying for a storefront. This is about selling devices which make it more likely those customers buy more products on Amazon. It is a completely different business model than Gateway stores, or even Apple / Microsoft stores.
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Highlight is 500SF stores. They are basically going to destroy any mall they move into, as they reinforce their brand and the only things they actually sell are their own branded products (used to push you into more online sales). Say you were looking at buying a watch, found one you liked, but remember that reinforcement of Amazon as you entered the mall, so you check the price on Amazon. That simple action has likely compromised the retailer's margin, if they keep any chance at the sale at all. (Women
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This is a simple-in-principle but hard-in-practice optimization problem. It runs like this: you have X investment dollars to divide between (A) on-line and (B) physical store selling; what is the optimal mix of A and B?
If you can run exactly one of these operations at a profit, the answer is simple. But if you can run *both* of them at a (not necessarily equal) profit, you run into the principle of diminishing returns. You may reach a point where further marginal investment in A pays less than a marginal i
Re:Bad Idea, Really Bad Idea (Score:4, Informative)
I buy my clothes online. Places like LL Bean have no hassle, free returns; clothes that last; and once you know the sizing you can pretty much depend on it. I've even been buying shoes, socks, and boxers on the web.
Shopping online is much more pleasant than going to the mall. I might still go if I needed a suit... But I work in IT, and didn't even wear a suit to my last few job interviews.
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One thing to note, LL Bean has had a similar business model for a very long time. My parents used to write down an order on a piece of paper pulled out of a catalog, send it away, wait a while and get clothes back. Returns were hassle-free. They are forward thinking so they've switched to ordering from the internet, but effectively the same process.
Secure cheap retail space (Score:1)
It would be a good front for a drone delivery base. Secure the retail space and have them be hop stops for drones to recharge midway through their delivery. They should be buying old sears locations.
Dear Amazon, (Score:1)
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JB Hifi seems to have bricks and mortar sewn up for electronics (with department chains such as bigw and target filling the rest).
As for Amazon's original market, books - nothing has really replaced the mega-store chain Borders, so they'd only be driving out Dymocks and smaller chains such as Readings.
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So this will be Consumer Distributing (Score:2)
for the millennial generation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Catalogue Archive http://www.cdarchive.ca/ [cdarchive.ca]
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I am curious if they will have any "Ship To Store" options for those of us who choose not to use Amazon Prime. The $49 rate before free shipping kicks in has seriously dented how much I buy from Amazon.
So Amazon is turning into the thing (Score:4, Insightful)
I use Amazon to avoid?
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Spending days, weeks, or months of one's life driving to and parking at crowded strip malls, scouring brick and mortar shelves, then leaving empty handed becasue the store was sold out of your item or was not available in your size, is not the apex of human experience. That time is now used to go to a concert, teach one's kids how to make a snowman, write letters to friends, volunteer, etc.. Many consider that progress.
If online shopping is too modern and 'anti-human' for you, then so too are fake earnest,
Returns! (Score:5, Insightful)
What I really hope this means is that if I need to return something that I bought on Amazon (if it was fulfilled by Amazon), and I need to return it, that I can do so by driving it to the Amazon store instead of dealing with packing it back up and shipping it back to them. That's the one part of online shopping that I hate dealing with, and this would give me another option.
Re: Returns! (Score:2)
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Is it really that onerous to stick it back in the box they shipped it in, slap the label on, and drop it off at the UPS store (or other mailbox store)? If so, you can even schedule UPS to pick it up. Even on a Saturday if you are too busy during the week.
Embrace, extend, extinguish? (Score:2)
It seems to me that Amazon's business model is based on the economies of NOT having the overheads associated with retail stores. I would guess that their growth is declining, or is projected to do so within two or three years. The last place for them to grow their market in North America is to start converting those customers who still shop at bricks 'n' mortar stores. Once Amazon manages to put a few of the traditional players out of business, I expect that they'll dramatically shrink the number of their o
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Another thing amazon.com gives me is incredible selection. If something's for sale and can reasonably be shipped, I can probably buy it on Amazon. A brick and mortar store can't possibly do that.
Accept returns there (Score:2)
Re: Accept returns there (Score:2)
Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward (Score:2)
Gee, let's go back to old tech, where the printed catalog was "the web" and the big catalogs opened stores to drive sales to their catalog - their names? Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Wards (extra credit for those who remember 'Monkey Wards")
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amazon should buy out sears?
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NO - not at all
Just saying they are following a well worn path, and they should watch out
AmazonBasics... (Score:4, Insightful)
If they want to actually make any money from these pop-up stores they should sell some of the most popular AmazonBasics items which will also help increase exposure of that line of products. Things like: batteries, keyboards, mice, mouse pads, various cables, coffee mugs, and so on. Things that go along with other things a shopper might have already purchased in the mall and that will remind them of Amazon when they use them with other company's products.
But will they stock Tuscan Whole Milk? (Score:2)
https://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-... [amazon.com]
And what did Google say about fiber? (Score:2)
I see Amazon opening stores, but with competition to deal with and local/land-based tax rates on realty/etc; it's gonna cost a lot to become Wal*Mart v2.01a.
I'll watch for online prices to climb to compensate.
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Indeed! I've frequently found that Amazon is no longer reliably the cheapest source of goods. I think that changed some time around when they were forced to pay VAT. So, it turns out that for all the fancy talk about logistics and economies of scale, robotic warehouses and service architectures, their real secret sauce was tax avoidance. It seems that with that gone, they're about the same as everyone else now.
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No, that was their secret sauce for building themselves up into a juggernaut, along with logistics and economies of scale.
Now that they're so big, and so many other companies sell through them too, they can afford to jack up their prices because so many people just buy from them by default. It's just like Walmart: lots of people buy from them by default, even though they're not always the best deal.
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Amazon has charged tax in most states for quite a while. If they have any physical presence, they have to collect tax, including warehouses. Around here, they're now using their own vans for deliveries instead of UPS or USPS. They reached a deal with a number of states to start collecting tax a few years ago.
Are there still any states where Amazon doesn't collect sales tax? (Well, other than states like Oregon and New Hampshire that don't have a sales tax?)
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purchase online and go to store for groceries? (Score:2)
Why just use peapod then and skip the drive?
Also it will add a lot overhead to the site to keep track of what is fresh at your local store and for fruit / other items that you need to look at and pick out?
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They do groceries now with AmazonNow in some markets... we tried it out but the prices for anything perishable are (justifiably, I suppose) extremely high, so we never remember to check it for deals on non-perishable stuff we might appreciate getting on short notice.
Odd. Plenty of places offer delivery of fresh fruit and veg for a similar price to what you'd pay in the shop.
You also have to be present when the delivery comes.
Don't they do the sensible thing of offering a 1 hour delivery window?
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Have you never lived outside of Connecticut? Almost every state is exactly like that. The only exceptions are the states that just don't have sales tax (Oregon and New Hampshire I think). You're supposed to either pay sales tax to the vendor, or you're supposed to voluntarily submit use tax if the vendor didn't collect any. And due to federal law, states are not able to force out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax for out-of-state purchases.
This move won't affect taxes much: Amazon already charges