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

To: Gil Gilbertson who wrote (28358)	11/27/1998 10:23:00 PM
From: llamaphlegm	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Bus Week stuff businessweek.com Still, Peapod faces some big hurdles. Since it will continue to buy the goods from its already established retail partners--not wholesalers- -it may miss out on the best prices for its consumers. Rivals ShopLink and Streamline, by contrast, have deals with wholesalers. The online activity has piqued the interest of the retail grocery giants--which could provide intense competition, the way that Barnes & Noble Inc. now is challenging Amazon in books. Royal Ahold, the Dutch parent of Giant and Stop & Shop, is experimenting with online groceries in the U.S. and Europe and thinks online sales could represent between 5% and 10% of its total--or as much as $4 billion--in five years. ''We see a big future for this,'' says Ahold Executive Vice- President Hans Gobes. and from investment figures for the week -- BLOOMBERG MONEY FLOW ANALYSIS Rebound ahead? Stocks with most 1-month significant buying on price weakness Price change AT&T 63 7/8 -3/8 Apple Computer 36 1/4 -1 3/16 Telefonos de Mexico-ADR 50 1/4 -3/4 BEA Systems 13 3/4 -5 1/4 Lockheed Martin 108 3/8 -2 11/16 Chevron 80 5/16 -1/8 Decline ahead? Stocks with most 1-month significant selling on price strength Price change Dell Computer 65 7/8 3 3/8 Cisco Systems 76 3/16 14 13/16 MCI WorldCom 58 9/16 5 15/16 Amazon.com 218 96 9/16 Biogen 82 5/8 12 1/4 Inktomi 146 3/8 61 3/8 'BOTS' DON'T MAKE GREAT SHOPPERS Intelligent agents that search the Net often miss out on the best bargains Like most other guys, I'm not terribly fond of shopping, especially at this time of year. In fact, I don't even much like shopping online: Web delays can make the server seem as slow as the mall. About the best I can say about Web shopping is that I don't have to look for a parking place. So I should be a natural customer for a software technology that uses ''intelligent agents'' or ''bots'' (as in robots). These snippets of software are designed to scour the Web for the best prices on all sorts of goods, making online bargain hunting painless. Alas, this turns out to be another case where the hype is outrunning reality. To test this new approach, I tried out three automated shopping services. mySimon is brand new and offers service through its own Web site, www.mysimon.com. Junglee and Jango are more established, and they power the shopping services on Web portals. I tried Junglee on Yahoo! (yahoo.junglee. com) and Snap (www. snap.com) and tried Jango through Excite (www. jango.com). DEAD END. I shopped for a variety of potential gifts: TVs, cameras, golf clubs, toys, and kitchen equipment. Not one of the shopping services came close to turning up all the items I sought. And none consistently offered the best prices. In the end, I think I did about as well using sites I was already familiar with or found using conventional search engines. For example, I chose a 27-inch Sony TV, Model KV-27V22 available from online electronics dealer 800.com (www.800.com) for $489.95. None of the agents found it there or anywhere else. mySimon did best, finding the fairly similar Model KV-27V40 at Best Buy Online (www. bestbuy.com) for $499. The closest Junglee and Jango came was the KV-27V40 for $50 more at Crutchfield (www.crutchfield.com). An attempt to buy a camera went only slightly better. I chose a Canon EOS Elan II from Wolf Camera (www.wolfcamera.com) for $599.95. mySimon found it for $519.95 at Abbey Camera (www.abbeycamera.com). Jango doesn't offer conventional film cameras. Junglee pretends to, but searches for any models of well-known makes came up empty. KitchenAid mixers are favorites of serious cooks, and Appliances On Line (www. appliances.com) offers the Model K45ss Classic for $175. Neither Jango nor mySimon offer cooking gear, but Junglee tracked it down for an unimpressive $239 at FactoryMall (www. factorymall.com). Finding the Microsoft ActiMates Arthur interactive doll was simple, but the price disparities were an eye-opener. Jango located it at Chumbo (www. chumbo.com) for an excellent price of $40.99. mySimon offered $49.95 at EB World (www.ebworld.com). But the best Junglee could do was $110 at F.A.O. Schwarz. Lego's robot construction kit, MindStorms Robotics Invention System (BW--Oct. 12) posed more of a challenge. I found it at Discovery Channel Online (www. discovery.com) for $199.95. mySimon didn't locate it at all. Junglee went back to F.A.O. Schwarz, which wanted $220. Jango found a remarkable price of $149 at Chips & Bits (www. cdmag.com), but the site was only taking ''preorders,'' even though the product has been available for a month. BARRIERS. I had very good luck shopping for a Callaway Biggest Bertha Driver. Divot's Discount Golf (www. capecod.net/divots/chouse.htm) sells it for $369. mySimon and Jango both found it at Golf.com (www.golf.com) for $289.99. Junglee, oddly, found only a women's model, at $349.99, at Fogdog Sports (www.fogdog.com). Some facts of Internet life are responsible for these disparate and generally disappointing results. A lot of sites block the bots because online retailers do not want to be searched and listed by price to comparison-shopping services. Some retailers will strike a deal with one service and freeze the others out. The result is that none of the services delivers on its promise of comprehensive searching. Meanwhile, online shopping (like its mail- and phone-order cousins) calls for some caution. Read the fine print on prices, because shipping and handling charges vary considerably. And make sure you know what you are getting. Particularly in cameras and consumer electronics, there's a lot of ''gray market'' merchandise that has been imported outside of normal channels, and the products may or may not come with a valid manufacturer's warranty. High-tech or low, the old advice still applies: If a deal looks just too good to be true, it probably is.

To: Gil Gilbertson who wrote (28358)	11/27/1998 10:47:00 PM
From: llamaphlegm	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

fyi -- bus week chart indicates that online sales as a % of all us sales of the following products is: food <1% music 1% books 2% airline tix 2+% software 4+% porn 10% Now which industry is bezos likely to enter next??? software can't be nearly as exciting ... in any case bulls will claim, see how high amzn's stock is already and there's so much penetration to go in the marketplace, bears will undoubtedly notice that amzn, with 60-70% or so of the book sales (and sliding) of 2% (and growing) is miniscule as is the 20-50% of music sales, video sales not even on the radar screens ... when all's said and done, amzn has poured out tons of $$$ to get up and running and has loaded up on debt plans to run at least 3 more years of losses all before the big guns have begun playing seriously ... amzn's early growth success, certainly succeeded in attracting the attention of deep pocketed competition, sort of like the undersized heavy weight working himself into a sweating frenzy, come charging into the ring, having spent his best adrenaline rush and energy, while the larger pugilist is just slowly warming up, waiting until the real fight begins to let loose ... i've zero clue what amzn's stock will do in the next 1-3 months while this year's holiday shopping mania re; internuts continues, but i'll give you a hint about wht will happen next holiday season, once all major booksellers music sellers, video sellers, toy stores, electronic stors, department stores (easier to exchange that palmpilot at the local walmart, staples, etc. or thru the mail with amzn???) and every shop bot, portal wallet function at aol, xcit, msn, yahoo etc. have had a year to rev up their "enter your credit card once, and shop at 2500 merchants, we'll find the cheapest price" functions btw, among the inane arguments trotted out by TMF over the past 6 months that seem to have fallen by the wayside, are: 1. amzn is technologically superior to bks.com 2. the sense of community built up at amzn 3. the touch, the feel, the experience. 4. bots will never matter, web shoppers are not price sensitive (oh, so that's why you buy junglee) 5. switching costs are too high -- who'd ever want to bother to re-enter their credit card number for each new merchant that you bought an item from. 6. brick and mortar companies just don't get it -- tell that to toys r us, the gap, bks.com, et al 7. amzn's web savvy mgt. team can't be beat (aol-bertelesmann, msn, yahoo, xcit) Are therer other bullish arguments for those insane among us who actually still try to invest according to a company's long term prospects???