Let's see what happens when FAANG pull the plug in France. I can guarantee you the public will remove whoever was in power and it would be back to the status quo.
A second order effect would be the rise of a regional competitor to fill the vacuum. Then Amazon, even if they played nice, would have a hard time pushing back in to those markets, at the same time the regional competitor would, if wise, get on good terms with the EU regulatory regime and thereby give it some preferential treatment when trying to get into markets that Amazon had not vacated. A regional competitor could easily hit a tipping point and become an international one.
Long enough for the government and the people to feel the shock, but not long enough for a serious competitor to take advantage of.
No, it wouldn't. Amazon in the US is amazing compared to what Amazon is in Europe. Packages take a lot longer to arrive and the choice is much worse. There isn't even a central Amazon EU website! Yet no competitors exist. Absolutely nothing is even close to Amazon. For whatever reason, the EU market is incredibly behind in these kinds of services.
In fact, logistics over here is much better developed than the US. Most items can be next day delivered here in the UK for a low standard charge. Amazon has to offer same-day deliveries to the UK at a much higher level than the US in order to compete and maintain its competitive advantage.
Cool. What about the rest of Europe/the EU? I am in an EU country and ordering anything from any of the Amazons has a minimum delivery time of 1 week. Usually it's longer than that.
>Also digital e-commerce retailers are prevalent in all EU countries.
And they are not trustworthy. Those online retailers always have everything in stock, but after you order and pay money it always turns out that they will have to order it from somewhere else. Often that other place has no stock either. It took me almost a month to get a new HDD last year because of shenanigans like this.
>Amazon set up separate national operations in the EU due to social, regulatory and tax reasons.
This is true if you live in one of the five odd countries that have an Amazon site. The 20 other EU countries don't get this luxury.
My comment disagrees with that. To me, it's the other way around, Amazon has to do more than what they do in the US to compete over here.
So when I'm talking about getting relatively cheap next day delivery here, I'm talking about with any merchant, not just Amazon. That's why they have to offer more same-day delivery (than the US) to compete (and to justify the Prime subscription).
I'm arguing exactly about this. Yes, Amazon's doing great in the UK, but Europe does not stop at the border of the UK, France, and Germany. There are other countries there. I live in one. I explained that it's not rosy across Europe.
>So when I'm talking about getting relatively cheap next day delivery here, I'm talking about with any merchant, not just Amazon.
Great. Now what about the other few dozen European countries?
So your argument boils down to "Amazon is bad in europe, therefore no competition would arise even without Amazon"
That doesn't quite follow.
Are you saying that Amazon is the best that is possible in Europe? Even if that were the case, there's no reason an equally bad competitor couldn't fill the vacuum.
Even if I'm wrong, my point against the GGGP post stands: There wouldn't be some huge public uprising against local governments to get Amazon back if they decided to pull out.
No, I'm not saying that a competitor can't appear, I'm saying that it's unlikely, because it hasn't happened for such a long time. Of course there are other ecommerce stores but they aren't on Amazon's level.
I also agree that people wouldn't care much about it if Amazon pulled out. It would just be another way where Europe accepts worse service though. France still uses cheques to pay for some utilities (or at least they did only a few years ago).
The respectful admiration that people have in the US for big businesses and successful entrepreneurs doe not exist in France. Instead, there is the same feeling for the rebellious, for the one the fighting against big businesses, for the people.