Amazon Launches Own Pet Product Brand, Wag
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I find it fascinating how humans have such trouble operating in context of big picture and make so many short sighted decisions.
Businesses should be allowed to create whatever products they want, as long as they don't do anti-competitive things like work together with their competitors to fix prices.
Free markets are important.
Or say, if they owned a huge marketplace and eventually started producing a product, and then refused to stock their competitor's product in the huge marketplace.
Laissez faire capitalism has both benefits and risks, casual/militant dismissal of concerns can sometimes have negative consequences, sometimes very severe.
There aren't free markets in a pure sense and it's a good thing:
- Standard oil was broken into exxon, chevron, etc...
- Laws were introduced to prevent railroad barons from owning every industry by forcing fair treatment.
- Electricity producers aren't allowed to sell directly to their customers in many countries. They are forced to sell it to resellers.
>> as long as they don't do anti-competitive things like work together with their competitors to fix prices
That's subjective, What does anti-competitive mean? it could mean making cheaper competing products as a retailer. It could mean refusing to host your product just like it happened to chrome cast. It could be ranking competing products lower.
For commodity items like sugar and salt where differentiation is nonexistent, it doesn't make sense to pay a 100% premium for different packaging.
Also, why is Amazon launching this for just dogs? My cats are offended that they were left out!
They have the data of what is what people buys. They have that info for all kind of products. If it for dogs, it makes sense that it may be the best option.
The dogs I've had, for the most part, will eat anything from lettuce to cat poop. Amazon could sell cans of cat poop with bits of lettuce in it, and they'd wolf it down.
Companies should not be allowed to grow so large and so powerful that they can threaten multiple industries at once. I'm not necessarily saying they should be broken up as soon as they pass say $50 a year billion a year in revenues, but at the very least they should be disallowed from buying any other company as soon as they pass a similar mark or as soon as certain conditions for it being in "anti-trust mode" are met.
How are we going to have real competition in say AI, if Google keeps buying all the promising startups that come up with breakthrough AI technologies? Same for Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp. And now Amazon is doing the same thing.
The only answer to that right now is "maybe we're lucky and some other large corporation will buy that startup instead?" But that doesn't make me feel much better.
In the end, it all leads to at least an oligopoly across multiple industries, and a monopoly in specific industries. That's not good for consumers.
And I won't even go into how this much power and money concentrated into singular entities is bad for democracies, too. Even if you don't believe that these rich people and companies are literally buying the politicians and their votes, at the very least you should agree that they have disproportionate leverage in the government, for the same reason big banks do.
A more decentralized marketplace made-up of many more smaller companies is much better for consumers and democracies, too.
You can pass on one or two offerings, but they're getting increasingly hard to avoid across the board.
That's different.
[not specifically dog food]
If they don't solve it someone else will, and that someone else will destroy the perceived monopoly of Amazon. Alternatively Amazon will acquire them... in which case, Amazon will have solved it :)
Until some adulterated fake dog food kills your dog. Then it's your problem.
I don't think that monopolizing market is a good idea.. a healthy competition keeps the quality level of the products high.
They don't want to be and they're not really acting like it. Thus their store's quality is similar to or below that of ebay and far below that of directly chinese stores like Banggood or Ali Express.
That's a very good point. I don't see how they expect their costumers to believe in quality of their own products with this attitude.
I've been using Alibaba/Ali Express more often lately, and am finding that they are improving rapidly. For most products manufactured in Asia, they're significantly cheaper.
Quality is more consistent. It's not that everything there is better quality, but that you can more easily determine the level of quality you're willing to pay for and can be relatively confident what you're going to get.
Shipping time and (perceived) shipping cost are the big things that prevent Ali from growing rapidly in the US market. They're a few warehouses away from being a serious competitor to Amazon's retail business.
I'd say rapidly. And, it's really hard to see how they can be stopped. They're now capable disrupting any market they choose.
On the one hand, this can be a good thing, i.e Healthcare. On the other I feel like we're going to end up with something like Pixar's 'Buy-N-Large'
I know it's hard. But I was counting on Google Express being really really good in delivery and item availability. They partner with retailers in helping their products get more discovery and handle some logistics. I'd take 2 players competing vs one large player any day.
I ordered something from a department store down the street. It ended up getting shipped out of San Francisco, and took over a week to arrive. I could have ordered and returned something via Prime three times in the amount of time it took Google to send me something.
Plus, the selection is very limited. But that might just be my market.
Ehhh, I think you're really glossing over Amazon's failures here; they've tried to get into some markets and gotten pretty well demolished. If they've learned anything from those failures, it certainly isn't obvious.
They are certainly hit or miss on product design but their execution entering markets has been a high successful formula. Razor thin margins until the competition bleeds to death. I would like to understand examples of where they failed there?
I will also grant you that they do take a big of a 'see what sticks to the wall' approach to innovation. But do not mistake rapid iteration as a singular 'failure'
1) Mobile phones with the Fire phone - don't think this one requires any explanation.
2) Handmade goods with Amazon Handmade - Etsy's doing better than ever.
3) Travel with Destinations - don't think they've even tried to re-enter this market.
I'm sure I could find more, but we tend not to remember a company's failures (unless they're spectacular) as much as successes.
I don't think they can "be stopped" - at least not by competitors, as long as they maintain their overall strategy of expanding their marketshare by cutting margins below what their competitors can bear.
In my opinion, this is the way it should be. If a monopoly exists that is more efficient than a competitor can be, then it deserves to exist and its existence benefits consumers. On the other hand, if a monopoly becomes abusive then it will be destroyed very quickly by others who will be more than happy to undercut them.
Amazon (and all monopolies) will fail much more quickly than might be apparent at first glance if they abuse their position. "Bigger" does not always mean "stronger".
> Amazon (and all monopolies) will fail much more quickly than might be apparent at first glance if they abuse their position.
Are these universal truths, with no possible exceptions in the past of future?
> "Bigger" does not always mean "stronger".
Crossing the street without looking both directions does not always result in being injured or killed, but it often does.
More seriously, I remember when Amazon was this amazing book seller in the US and me (back in the UK) ordered from them because certain books were coming out sooner in the USA.
I get why they expanded and ate everything around them, I know that they probably wouldn't exist if they hadn't done that. But I do wish they could have done it by treating their employees better, and making the world better instead of just available faster.
Or the wag.com, which Amazon acquired as part of the Quidsi purchase - of which Amazon subsequently shut down?
https://consumerist.com/2017/03/29/amazon-will-shut-down-dia...