What are the chances that Amazon.com will go out of business or change their line of business within the next decade? I have an Amazon wishlist more than a mile long which is waiting on me winning the lottery so it would be disastrous to me if Amazon went out of business any time soon. Ebay going out of business would also hurt.
No worries; your Amazon is just fine.
I worry that Amazon will go under. I love Amazon.
Perhaps we should form a grief group in advance.
How’s my Amazon doing? They were working on a new TV show about her but apparently it was so awful, it didn’t get past the pilot and the network dropped it like a hot thing that needs to be dropped quickly.
What was the problem, too many snu-snu jokes? Or not enough?
Amazon.com has a market cap of $78,000,000,000 as of today. That is about the same or a little bigger than McDonald’s, Disney, and the Royal Bank of Canada for example. That isn’t to say that big companies can’t fail. They can but it is extremely unlikely they would just go away quickly and quietly with that much money behind them. Amazon is still seen that new bookstore net startup in popular perception when that is far from the reality these days. They are a major retailer in almost all categories, a streaming entertainment service, and a provider of business to business IT services with their vast and instantly scalable cloud computing model.
I don’t think they are going anywhere anytime soon and they have done a great job of diversifying their business model and show no signs of slowing down.
I remember when I worked for Ingram Books and Bezos kept the Accounts Payable stuff under his bed. My how things have changed.
StG
There’s some reason to be concerned. Amazon depends heavily on subsidized mail and their sales tax exemption. Both of those appear to be threatened.
Please explain. They aren’t sales tax exempt for me and I doubt they are for most people. Legally, almost everyone has to pay a ‘use’ tax to their own state to make up unpaid sales taxes. Most people don’t do it but it is the law.
I do worry about the Amazon Prime model however. That deal is almost too good to be true. You get steaming movies plus free shipping for a year for $80. I abuse the shit out of that thing. The UPS man comes to my door multiple times a week with single packages that may just have a bottle of lotion in them. They sell almost everything.
Like Boomhauer said, “That dang old internet man, you click, click, click. It’s real easy.” There must be other people using it for concierge retail experience as well. I can’t see how they would make money hand delivering me everything I desire for $80 a year.
And aren’t they selling millions of kindles at a loss for each one?
I’m not sure about the other models but apparently they only lose something like $1 per Kindle Fire sold. (Not the right cite, but similar discussion here).
Especially when it’s a disincentive to people like me who’d pad out an order with an extra item or two in order to go over the twenty-five dollar limit for free shipping.
They make it up on volume. According to business week, Prime members buy 150% more after getting Prime and the 3% of Prime members make up 20% of Amazon’s sales. It’s been called the most successful loyalty program in history.
It’s not just most people that don’t do it. Virtually no one does. As a result, prices on Amazon are 5-10% lower in most states than they otherwise would be.
Their prices on most non-media items are higher than the prices in my big box store. Since I’m sure they get volume discounts, I assume they’re making up the cost of shipping to Prime members by jacking up the prices of those items.
Can you give some examples? I’ve generally found that I’d paying a 20 - 50% premium for the privilege of buying something at a physical store and it’s hard to find much that Amazon isn’t cheaper for.