To: JBL who wrote (27733 ) 11/22/1998 10:45:00 PM From: Rob S. Respond to
I won't say that Bezos' strategy is a failure - that is yet to be proven. He has been highly successful building early sales momentum and promoting the stock to Investors. But it is also yet to be proven that his model for success will pan out. His model requires buying market share and then, hopefully, reaping rewards through lower costs of spreading overheads out on more business. But Barnes & Noble, WallMart and others expect to lose money on their Internet operations for 5 or more years and stand to benefit their walk-in sales through the advertising and promotion they get on the Internet. This "cross-polination" of advertising and tie-ins with the Internet are not posible with Amazon. So what? Because the competitors will have a lower overall cost of business - being able to spread their advetising expense over a broader base of business. There are many creative new "Internet tie-in" strategies that are just starting to emerge that will make plain Internet merchants seem sterile in comparison. The Internet is powerful, but combine the power of the Internet with the "touchy-feelies" of walk-in and immediate pick-up that stores deliver and the combination becomes a knock-out.
