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Comment by cloakandswagger | Hacker News Reader

Nothing notable here except Amazon's punny acronym for unprofitable products.

The nice thing is the elimination of waste. The lack of margin on those items implicitly means there is significant waste involved with selling them: large, wasteful packaging as well as more fuel needed to transport them to warehouses and then to customers.

It serves as a forcing function to encourage manufacturers to adapt their products to this new form of distribution, similar to Walmart or other retailers being selective about what they grant shelf space to.

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> Nothing notable here

I didn't know Amazon was now focussing "on its bottom line in addition to its rapid growth" [1]. It has historically been a top-line company.

Amazon asking Coca-Cola to "start shipping [Dash button] orders directly to consumers" also surprised me. It shows a shift from relying on logistical and distribution supremacy to market power through customer access. (One also wonders if recent political elements factored into the decision.)

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-targets-unprofitable-ite...

... and also means that they reduce competitor barriers by essentially taking themselves out of the loop; jet can offer “jash” buttons tomorrow with a similar arrangement.

Or, if you are coca cola, you will know who all of you major repeat dash customers are. Just ship them a "coke now" button and cut out Amazon completely. Surprisingly, product is no longer unprofitable once you cut out the 15%+ Amazon cut.

Another benefit for the customer is that you know you're going to get the real thing, not co-mingled fake crap from God knows where.

That was the immediate benefit I thought of.

I think consumers would be quite happy if they got Gray-market Mexican or Canadian coca-cola made with real sugar...

I wonder about that sort of "waste" if they have a marketing role like say offering milk despite losing money because it brings in traffic. Dropping CRaP may harm their one stop shop status for traffic.

Put another way, very little in all of this accounts for consumer needs/wants/experience. Force me to use pantry or buy larger quantities at higher unit prices? Nah. I’ll just use target’s drive up and have it in the quantity I want in two hours or less. At the same time, as Amazon slips in service and shipping times, other smaller online retailers are getting much faster and cleaner experiences that also avoid the numerous fake reviews.

Amazon seems to be acting as if they have a stronger position with a more loyal or locked in customers than they do - and I’m happy to start looking at other options.

Yeah they seem to have undergone a growth to margins shift a bit a while ago since they went from little profit to billions. I am a bit disappointed but I am glad at the implications of a healthy market being vindicated - essentially that online retail isn't a "pump and dump retail" exploitable monopoly because of the relative ease of undercutting.

Notable: Amazon, which put all the smaller companies out of business with it's unbeatable selection and convenience, is winnowing the range of products it sells.

This will reduce the variety of stuff available to consumers.

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