Amazon Retools With Unusual Goal: Get Shoppers To Buy Less Amid Coronavirus Pandemic (wsj.com) 36
Amazon is retooling its website to do the opposite of what made it one of the world's most powerful and dominant companies: Sell fewer items. From a report: Amazon is struggling to meet an immense surge in order volumes and contend with worker absences during the coronavirus pandemic. In response, the Seattle-based company is taking steps to persuade shoppers to put fewer items in their carts [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing sources. Last month, Amazon began removing fixtures of its site designed to lead customers to make additional purchases. It removed most of its popular recommendation widgets that show shoppers what other people with similar items in their basket also bought, the people said. Also among the changes, which Amazon hasn't yet announced publicly, the company decided to cancel Mother's Day and Father's Day promotions typically visible on the site to encourage spending. Its annual July shopping extravaganza, Prime Day, has been pushed back indefinitely, and Amazon has scaled back coupons that encourage shoppers to fill their carts.
Before this (Score:4, Informative)
Even before this, they replaced the entire homepage usually stock full of physical products to be 100% digital products. This way, they can sell unless virtual DRM rather than real products that require real people to handle.
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Their MP3s don't have DRM.
Re: Before this (Score:1)
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Who the hell is buying MP3s these days? The format is not only old enough to drink but probably has a couple of kids and is living in a trailer park by now.
That's nothing, I just bought a book the other day. Now that's an outdated format.
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Re: Before this (Score:4, Insightful)
You must be in marketing. Do they lack that fresh new format smell or something? This attitude is why we have way too many formats for damned near everything.
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I don't get why they want to flush their business down the drain though? Some kind of COVID-19 virtue signaling?
I guess they simply can't keep up. Not pushing people to buy more stuff they don't need has no negative impact on their reputation. Not being able to fulfill orders or taking too long does. They'd probably rather sell a bit less in the short term than have disgruntled customers look elsewhere.
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They're not. They're optimizing. They've hit their order fulfilment capacity so now they're trying to convince people to buy more non-physical stuff, and probably more expensive physical stuff. Less small, low margin crap for their limited warehouse staff to have to pick off shelves.
Homepage products changed (Score:3)
I noticed that they have completely changed what products show up on their homepage. It used to be all sorts of stuff based on things I've viewed, purchased, or put on my wishlist. Now it's all books and movies. They've clearly made a huge change in their marketing.
Naw, that's just where monopsony works best (Score:2)
Bezos is confusing you again. Amazon is just in such a powerful position that they can focus on pushing the stuff with the highest profit margins. No reason to feature stuff you are probably forced to buy online (where, in accord with the story, Amazon is focusing on maximizing the profits by not even bothering to sell the low margin stuff). (At least not right now while they are pressured on shipping capacity.)
I'm sure that it's true in the book publishing industry, and pretty sure that it's true in movies
What about eBay? (Score:2)
I have to wonder if eBay is seeing a surge, since individual and small sellers probably have nothing to do all day but spring clean, collect their junk, and put it up for sale. Something of a contrast between de/centralized sellers in similar markets.
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If I want something quickly I find it on Ebay, often for as much or less than Amazon. Quite handy before the gas mask, NATO 40mm filter and industrial respirator supply began to dry up.
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Too little, too late (Score:2)
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They are a joke. I no longer see the point in paying prime membership and their service is no longer usable. Who knows when or if it will be again for the foreseeable future
This is good though, hopefully others will follow suit and dump amazon. Itâ(TM)s time to return to brick and mortar providers that serve communities, not places like amazon that fall to shit in times of crises
Some of us do use their streaming service and you can borrow books... so, there's that...
However, if you just use it for free shipping, it's not really worth it...
As for shopping, Amazon carries a lot of items that you can't find at Brick and Mortar stores simply because they can't make money on many of these items from the local market alone. Amazon, or something like it, will continue to exist as long as this is the case.
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Brick and mortars ill serve my community. And I'm not able to run around all over to shop. Amazon certainly offers me a good price on most items. And I can always check things out on eBay and Newegg.
But that doesn't mean I have to fall for Prime. If I'm in a rush, I'll pay expedited shipping surcharge. 2-day wouldn't get it to me fast enough anyway. Offer me half-price next-day with Prime, I might be interested. I have no interest in Prime's other "benefits."
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Time to sell (or donate) (Score:2)
This might be a good opportunity to clean up the garage, attic, or wherever you store the extras. People need stuff to pass time (like games, movies), and if you are like me (or average person in US), there is lots of them unused. In fact many still in packaging.
So it might be a good time to: exchange, donate, or sell, depending on how charitable you feel, and how much cash you need.
Amazon is still allowing third party sellers for "non essential" stuff, and eBay is there.
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Boring (Score:1)
Lets talk about how Elon Musk is ripping CNN to shreds on Twitter. It is much more entertaining.
I see (Score:2)
Instead of a section "Things you might like" there will be a section "Things you will hate".
And for every 5 days you don't order, you'll get a coupon.
That's the /. I know and love (Score:2)
Amazon is simply not competitive (Score:2)
Any other online retailer is happy to sell products without all the fuss. Why buy from Amazon and risk non-essential hammer and other shenanigans? They won't even sell me Star Wars IX on Blu-ray but they will sell me a fake "1 TB" USB stick for $29.99.
Products need to say where they are made (Score:3)
We might reconsider buying things that are made in China.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
to their benefit (Score:2)
Of course, amazon is not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. For one they are getting shut down in places like france for violation of orders to only sell essential items.
But the most likely cause of this is that they simply cannot meet the new demand. They are not geared for a 10x increase in people ordering. They need time to build their staff at the very least. They cannot when the minimum wage employees they would be targeting to grow are all getting 2k per month in free govt monies. So they
Can they hire more and add PPE (Score:2)
Having a huge increase in demand is usually a good thing. With the very high short term unemployment, can't they hire more? PPE would be needed, but I woudl expect production would be ramping up very quickly and amazon has awfully deep pockets
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I'm not sure that Amazon really wants a huge surge in the sale of the types of products that are experiencing surge demand. These are nearly loss leaders in the grocery industry.
No wonder the saved items in my cart (Score:2)