Whatever. But billion dollar retail industries are not built on great folks like you. They are built on probably what you'd consider the "Great Un-washed." :)
B-school 101 stuff. If we understand how the world really is, we can make more successful businesses because we will understand the market how customers think. We can't let our personal perfection cloud our judgement about the world as it is. :)
[1] using the kinect to virtually measure clothes on your TV. [2] using a variable robot to show you how a specific garment would look on your specific measurements.
That could easily change.
Another part of retail is that different kinds of stores support each other. Anyone "making a shopping run" usually visits a number of stores, especially in the suburbs/exurbs where they are a distance away. The few stores people have to visit, the fewer "runs" they make and the more pressure they have to make do with stuff online. Just as much, when some of the stores in a retail complex go out of business, the complex suffers. The total number of complexes has to shrink and by the time that happens, some portion of the remainder is further disrupted.
Retail is in trouble. I'm in a major metropolitan area and it is very visible.
And knockoffs are everywhere on amazon's site. I've wanted one of these cool suck.uk bottle opener keychains that looks like an old school key for a while [3] but their shipping charges to the US are too expensive. So I found it on amazon [4]. If you read the reviews, it's full of complaints about knockoffs or the steel snapping. And I've seen it sold for as little as $2.99 with shipping while amazon sells it for $9. Adding to the skeeviness, the cheapest vendor of that item changes all the time, and for quite a while amazon didn't sell it directly. I finally bought it from amazon proper and I'm hoping they got the actual item and not some knockoff themselves, but who knows. Shit like this makes it hard to be willing to buy food on amazon.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls
[3] http://www.suck.uk.com/products/keybottleopener/
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Suck-UK-Key-Bottle-Opener/dp/B0000B0DK...
I wish there were a way to set a flag in your account to ONLY show Amazon.com LLC products.
Manufacturer is OXO, but it says "In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available." below the price. That means it's sold directly by Amazon.
You can also go to "more buying choices" where it is even more transparent.
The whole "Marketplace" concept might have seemed cool back when everybody was trying to be an eBay competitor, but I'd be happy if they just ditched it, or moved it over to some subsite-ghetto where I don't ever have to see it. When I go to Amazon.com, I want to purchase products from Amazon, not from some random guy in a basement somewhere, using them for payment processing.
That said, they make it pretty easy to tell who you're buying from, at least when you get to the point of checking out. Sometimes if you're moving quickly, you might not realize it until then, and I have definitely abandoned would-be sales when I've realized an item is coming from a Marketplace seller rather than Amazon itself.