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

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (93419)	2/11/2000 8:14:00 PM
From: Greater Fool	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

>>No one comes near Amazon in customer satisfaction What about Amazon's customer satisfaction constitutes a significant barrier to entry? It just doesn't seem to me to be all that compelling. It's something, but it sure as heck doesn't seem to be as difficult to duplicate as, say, a microprocessor manufacturing technology. Catalog and mail order companies have been doing the customer satisfaction thing just fine for quite a while now. Even if competitors don't make off with Amazon's market position, they certainly can make life miserable. Every buy.com ad is another ad that Amazon has to counter with expensive advertising of their own. Branding works as a barrier, but it's plenty expensive to maintain. Bezos's core thesis was that there would be only a few dominant players in e-commerce. The only way that will hold true is if there are some sustainable competitive advantages. For example, if Amazon can negotiate more favorable terms with suppliers by virtue of size, that would be a start. I find it hard to believe that that will happen, as all your favorite B2B companies will specialize in getting the same favorable rates for everyone. I don't see anything that will effectively lock out or otherwise sufficiently discourage new entrants.