Can Amazon Be the Wal-Mart of the Web?

[snopes]

Fifteen years after Jeffrey P. Bezos founded the company as an online bookstore, Amazon is set to cross a significant threshold. Sometime later this year, if current trends continue, worldwide sales of media products — the books, movies and music that Amazon started with — will be surpassed for the first time by sales of other merchandise on the site. (That transition already occurred this year in its North American business.)

In other words, in an increasingly digital age, Amazon is quickly becoming the world’s general store. Alongside the books and CDs and DVDs are diapers, Legos and power drills, not to mention replacement car clutches and more arcane items like the Jackalope Buck taxidermy mount ($69.97).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/bu.../20amazon.html

[crocoduck_hunter]

Nonsense, Amazon's customer service isn't nearly bad enough for it to be the WalMart of the Internet.

[Mad Jay]

Yeah Amazon is like Walmart in the sense that it sells everything under the sun. However, the similarities end there

Walmart squelches competition and drives small businesses out of business. Amazon, OTH, has built a solid business around helping small retailers sell goods on it's site and also encourages small businesses to compete with each other (and itself).

Walmart works by squeezing the bottom-line of the companies involved in the entire supply chain, which results in a moderately varied selection of moderate quality goods. You won't find the best clothes and the best DVD players in Walmart, because well, they won't sell as fast as Walmart can afford to sell them. Amazon 's business model is built on having more choice.

[JoeBentley]

That and Walmart is bound by physical store limitations. Even a huge warehouse sized Walmart super-duper-mega center can only stock a very limited number of items.

So while Walmart is forced to stock only the most popular and generic of items while, pretty much by necessity, neglecting more esoteric, specialty, and rare items, Amazon doesn't have that problem.

In other words going to Walmart to get the latest big Hollywood blockbuster DVD release, #1 album, and New York Time Best Seller, and a pack of AA batteries, you're good. If you want a 1934 German Expressionist Film, a copy of Third Reich and Roll by the Residents, a college level textbook on fluid dynamics, and a replacement battery for a GPS that was discontinued four years ago... you're SOL. Amazon's ability to retain a huge inventory and provide small niche business with a centralized billing and shipping service negates that problem.

[snopes]

Can Amazon Be the Wal-Mart of the Web?

Only if they allow customers to rearrange their on-line listings and randomly move stuff into different categories.

[Logoboros]

Originally Posted by Mad Jay

Walmart works by squeezing the bottom-line of the companies involved in the entire supply chain, which results in a moderately varied selection of moderate quality goods. You won't find the best clothes and the best DVD players in Walmart, because well, they won't sell as fast as Walmart can afford to sell them. Amazon 's business model is built on having more choice.

I would expect that Amazon does have the power to push around some of the major publishers (or less major but still significant vendors like Audible). I don't know if they use it to force cheaper wholesale prices for Amazon like Walmart does, but I would expect they have the leverage to do so if they wanted to.

[Insensible Crier]

Originally Posted by snopes

Only if they allow customers to rearrange their on-line listings and randomly move stuff into different categories.

And only allow 3 people to click the checkout button at a time.