From Forbes:
I’m a huge Amazon fan. It is one of my very favorite companies to write about and buy from. It is arguably the most convenient and easiest company on the planet to do business with.
. . . .
A couple of questions have been on my mind. First, who can take on Amazon? Being the leader in business, or anything, makes you a target. Everyone wants to be No. 1, so if you hold the top spot, every competitor would love to take your place. And my second question is, how long can Amazon sustain its momentum of growth and innovation?
If you look beyond other major online competitors, such as Walmart or Target, who can compete against Amazon? The answer may be … Google.
Google recently introduced Shopping Actions, an online retail platform that is not unlike the platform customers experience when they search for and buy products from Amazon. The basics of how it works are simple. Any retailer can sign up to be on the platform. When a customer searches Google for a product, links are displayed on the right side of the page that read: “Shop for (searched product) on Google.” The customer clicks and is immediately taken to a page that shows the merchandise, how many vendors are selling it, pricing and more. The customer can choose a vendor to buy from, and rather than its traditional “pay-per-click” model, Google takes a small piece of every transaction.
. . . .
Retailers now have the option of putting their merchandise on Amazon or Google. (Or, why not both?) Amazon still holds the edge, and will for a long time, partially because so many customers are loyal to Amazon and its Prime program. Another big advantage for Amazon is its reputation for amazing customer service. If you buy something and there is a problem, you contact Amazon and its world-class customer service kicks in. That’s the “Amazon difference.” Customers trust Amazon. They know the return policy is easy and convenient.
Link to the rest at Forbes
Hey Google!
Match this:
https://www.cnet.com/news/inside-an-amazon-warehouse-that-ships-your-supersized-purchases/
https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393
Right.
With “infrastructure” in this case being the global net of distribution centers.
Walmart can approximate it in regions where they have B&N stores but none of the other big online players have that kind of physical world presence.
Amazon beats B&M with its online power and it beats online with its B&M warehouses. And, increasingly, B&M stores, too.
Everyday, they look more and more like the original Sears.
It’s not rocket science. Amazon invested heavily over many years building its infrastructure, all the time being criticised by some commentators for “not making a profit”. Yes, Alphabet is more than large enough to compete with Amazon, as is Apple, neither of which shows any real desire to do so. Perhaps this has something to do with the enormous sums they would need to spend on infrastructure just to reach a theoretically level playing field. Then they would need to take customers from Amazon.
“It’s not rocket science. Amazon invested heavily over many years building its infrastructure, all the time being criticised by some commentators for “not making a profit”.”
Which is why there will be no ‘Amazon killers’ any time soon, none of the others want to look long term – only quarterly …
Plus, the time to slowly ramp into the market (and do it cheaply) is long past. The barriers to entry, and the cost of entering the game today are much higher than when Amazon started.
The same is true of most of the markets dominated by big companies decried as “evil”. They all started out small, effectively targeted a new market when it was being born, and were *good* at it. They stayed good at it and grew as the market grew. Many try the same strategy but aren’t good enough and fail. For every Microsoft, Apple, or Amazon, there are dozens of Palms, Apollos, Nokias, and AltaVistas. Being first helps but staying good helps more.
If you’re neither first nor good you’re better off staying out. And since being good is getting ever more complicated and expensive, finding willing challengers will only get harder.
One trait that Google, AliBaba, Rakuten and eBay share in common is that their online retail business operations are primarily i(and often exclusively) business to business. Consumers are not the paying customer.
Much like with Facebook and twitter, the consumer is the product they sell.
Amazon and WalMart do some of that business but their primary focus is on the consumer.
All of these companies are essentially online mall operators, whereas Amazon and Walmart are both the mall landlord *and* the anchor store drawing traffic.
That is a big advantage.
Plus, as pointed out by DaveMich, Amazon doesn’t just lease online space to their merchants; they also lease actual warehouse space, provide billing services, shipping services, and marketing/ad services.
Much bigger advantage.
They pretty much answered their own postulate. If you buy from Amazon, you pay via Amazon and contact Amazon, even if it’s a 3rd party seller. Google just wants to aggregate other retailers and not deal with the messy stuff.
Amazon considers you a customer. Google considers you a site visitor. Boy howdy is there ever a difference.
Does the buyer pay just one company (Google)? If not this is just another ebay.
And unless Google’s getting into the warehouse and shipping (and customer service!) business this can never get anywhere near what Amazon is doing …
So far I have seen no indication that Google wants to take on Amazon. If they ever do, they certainly could give it a run for its money.