Having a competent PR department matters a LOT in business.
Thus, if I were in Walmart's position, I would be spinning out separate companies potentially rather than even doing M&A to try to capture the market because I'm not sure if jet.com is really going to undo the damage.
About a decade ago when I was at HP one of the senior executives in the personal computing group was talking about how he demoed a touchscreen computer and people were pretty impressed and asking when it's going to be out and he was disappointed that nobody knew that HP had already released it. Combined with a completely unfocused company direction, anemic marketing budget, and continued obsession with trying to squeeze more money out of legacy markets (like most traditional enterprises TBQH) HP's reputation as a low end commodity OEM with mediocre software in the consumer verticals has been quite solidly imprinted and little will change that perception without clear, obvious direction change to consumers. And few businesses (and more accurately, their board of directors) have the guts to do that.
Nah, that's limited to upper middle class millennial who can afford to "buy local" and buy fair-trade coffee. If you walk into any Walmart in the country you'll see a lot of millennials shopping there because it's cheaper (and in a lot of places its essentially the only store in town).
The PR stuff still stands, the swipe at millennials is as unrepresentative as you said it was.
Just as much, my own experience of Walmart's brick and mortar stores has been stuff of such low quality that it's effectively expensive even at their low prices - a place only those who are desperate would shop at.
And that's thing. Walmart has a huge PR hurdle to overcome because it's Walmart. Sure it has a huge base of customers but it also has a huge base of un-customers, of people would never, never touch the place.
So here, it's a lot more than whether they have X feature.
The "without worry" part is maybe being optimistic. There have been a couple of previous hacker news discussions on the problem of counterfeit goods being sold by Amazon. The problem here is that if there are counterfeit goods being sold by a 3rd party, you might get them even if the product listing your ordered from says that it is sold and shipped by Amazon. Amazon co-mingles goods from Amazon and third party sellers unless the third party seller explicitly opts out of it (which costs more money for them and someone selling counterfeit goods has every incentive to co-mingle their goods with others). I don't think I have run into counterfeit goods, but others claim to have:
Part of this also is that Amazon has very generous return policies. I feel pretty sure that if whatever I buy is generally bad, I can return it. In fact, I have a highly neurotic friend who returns thing constantly to Amazon and is generally able to do so.
As to counterfeits. for the consumer, this only matters if the quality is unacceptable (which reviews and returns take care of - at for me). For copyright holders, it's problem but that's what courts are made for.
That is the problem here with Amazon. With comingling of products, it doesn't really matter what the reviews say since even if it says sold and shipped by Amazon it could be from a shady 3rd party merchant with counterfeit goods. A counterfeit battery will hopefilly just have a shorter life than expected, but if it something you consume, it could be worse and you may or may not be able to tell if it is fake. I like the convenience and selection of Amazon, (and have been a customer since they started) but until they stop this comingling, I feel I have to be a little more careful what I buy from them.
i buy a TV at a random retailer. the tv breaks. i need to take the TV there, they send it to the manufacturer for repairs, 6 weeks later i maybe get my tv back.
a tv ordered at amazon breaks, they collect it, bring a replacement and deal with the problem themselves.
for me, and a lot of other people, amazon has quit competing on price. we buy there for the convenience, not because its "cheap".
shopping at amazon is seamless. even when you order something and then dont want it. i dont have to accept the package and then send it back, i just tell the postal person that i dont want it, they return it, amazon accepts that as a return and ships the money back without asking questions. not probing questions. they just dont ask. they do the thing i expect them to do without even bothering me with an email. it doesnt bother me at all. thats whats so good about it.
i get that thats first world problems. but hackernews IS about spoiled software engineers being spoiled.
amazon has this weird concierge service built in. it just works for me.
What sort of concierge service is Amazon providing you?
True, but I see that as a strike against Amazon. I was really pissed off recently when I found Amazon were selling the DVD/BD of a popular recent movie as a Prime exclusive; non-Prime customers can't buy it from them at all, unless they want to roll the dice on that wretched hive of scum and piracy which is the Amazon thirdparty market.
If Prime becomes effectively unavoidable, and Amazon's sticker prices get to amortize the Prime fee as "discounts", then they no longer have much of an incentive to compete on true price. As a customer, that's not even a tiny bit compelling.
Doesn't Amazon use shared inventory between first party and fulfilled-by-Amazon third party sellers, so that the first party market is potentially as much a hive of scum and piracy as the third party market. I'm quite sure that's been raised as an issue many times with regard to counterfeits.
For a good example of this, look up reviews on CR2032 coin cell batteries sometime. In a nutshell, regardless of which brand you pick or who you buy from on Amazon, it seems you're very likely to get re-packaged and possibly counterfeit goods.
Look at the do a search for amazon comingling and look at the FBA forums
In recent years I've found myself swinging back towards buying things in brick-and-mortar shops, mostly because the delivery experience can be so horrible. Maybe things are better in the US, but in the UK getting things delivered is non-trivial when you work during the day, and even if you're at home, it's very common for UK postmen to not bother even bringing your parcel with them; they just leave a "while you were out" card forcing you to arrange redelivery. Delivery woes of various kinds have been a staple of /r/britishproblems since the start.
Amazon don't currently do this where I am; if they did I'd use it a lot more.
I'm amazed more couriers don't offer the same service, because it is really good.
Honestly, many people don't care exactly when their parcels arrive -- they can order it to work, or their concierge/front desk can hold it, or it can be left at their door/porch. And if you care about this sort of thing, it may be just as economical to move into "luxury" apartments that provide this sort of perk as it is to pay for something like BufferBox that provides a proxy of it.
Come now; choosing where to live is a complex balance of pros and cons for most people, I can't imagine many having this anywhere near their list of priorities.