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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (72695)	8/8/1999 7:48:00 PM
From: Eric Wells	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 164684

>>A good retailer benefits from offering a good >>product at a decent price along with excellent >>customer service. Glenn - do you really believe there is much room for establishing a competitive advantage in the area of customer service in doing retail on the web? Since the layout and navigation of a web site can be easily copied, the only places where I can see customer service coming into play are in (1) timely shipping of products and (2) timely response to customer inquiries and (3) keeping your web site up and running. I believe all of these can be easily accomplished (although Ebay has had difficulty with the third) - provided you have good servers, good distribution infrastructure and good management. I'm not saying there is no possibility of establishing competitive advantage in the area of customer service - I just believe the advantage to be gained is small compared to the advantage one might gain in this area in the bricks & mortar world. Of course, you could argue that the advantage that Amazon might have in touting good customer service is purely a marketing advantage - that the perceived advantage is much greater than the real advantage. On a separate, but related topic - if I were Bezos, I would be very concerned about new companies that are rumored to be working on "global shopping cart" services. A "global shopping cart" site would allow a customer to not only search for the lowest price of an item on the web, but would also allow the customer to actually purchase the item through the "global shopping cart" site (without having to go to the e-tailing site). Imagine if you will, going to a global shopping cart site and entering in the names of the three books you wish to buy along with your credit card number, and being able to get the absolute best price and make the purchase at the site, without having to visit barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com? If such technology does become available and if it proves to work (from not only a technical but legal perspective as well), it will introduce even greater price pressure (and lower margins) on e-tailers. Thanks, -Eric Wells

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (72695)	8/8/1999 10:29:00 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

>>A good retailer benefits from offering a good product at a decent price along with excellent customer service. Those that cannot offer all three, fail or at least, do poorly. The consumer will always receive s decent price regardless of their knowledge from a good retailer.<< gdr, but the customer would have to "know" they were at a good retailer. if they didn't "know" that then they might pay too much. right? gdr, the principle is simple. the less a customer knows, the more they are likely to pay. the more they know, the less they are likely to have to pay. i'm not saying anything more than that. we agree on the philosophy required to run a successful business long term. that is another issue.