getgo
you're a most welcome addition to this board (believ me, nasty old curmudgeons like me don't go around making this kind of statements) ... correct, inability to pass along price increases -- a fundamental tenet of the new age technology gurus -- means consumer revolution for commodity pricing. gosh, even buying a car -- a high margin product for a typical consumer buy, if ever there was one -- has been made a more transparent process thanks to the web
as for amzn -- hjm is right that wall st. just glops it onto the e commerce pile, but you know what -- the vast majority of consumers who buy there and the articles which write about amzn refer to it as a book store (maybe toss in music) ... know what else, amzn just finished
10th cheapest in the latest gomez advisors survey
and that's for books
music and videos -- it's prices, selection, and sites are inferior to the sector leaders --
i'd surmise that amzn -- whose book sales growth has already slowed dramatically -- see last 10q and posts here around last quarterly release -- is up sh-t's creek.
segment the market -- some component of the populace will buy at amazon and only at amazon forever --
1. they are price insensitive
2. have a loyalty to a store that i've rarely seen in the real world (or pretend to because they're long the stock) ... tell me does anyone here care all that much where you buy you're cds -- tower records, coconuts, etc.??? -- i could not care less so long as the service is reasonable and price competitive)
3. enjoy not having the luxury of being able to return a damaged or incorrect shipment to a real live store -- so that one need not deal with return shipping etc. if one does not want to.
folks long the stock somehow think that
1. borders site is inferior and will stay that way forever (the site is quite good and any techical bells and whistles amzn has are replicable within a few months)
2. barnes and noble and bertelesmann are just bullsh-tting when they state that
a. barnes.com will introduce video and music tabs within 1-6 months
b. bert will not take a sizable component of the marketplace with it's aol affiliations in europe (still a large market when i last checked).
3. the threat from columbia house and bmg on line is non-existent (trust me -- no annoying cds arriving in case you did not check off your monthly box and lots more people will sign up)
4. don't think that downloaded music or ebooks will make a dent in the market -- btw, barnes owns part of rocketbook and every .com delivery from them has a flier touting the book and what you can buy to read on it
as for this bot nonsense --
oh, a company with brand name among net geeks for books (and some other stuff) is supposed to attract mainstream shoppers as a mall -- oh, i guess it's then competing with every other aggregator of content so if amzn wants to go head to head with
aol-netscape
yahoo
msn
xcit
lycos
etc
etc
plus every other shop bot/mall that WILL be price sensitive, i'm curious to see how it will survive let alone ever make $$$
lp |
