The argument I’m familiar with goes as follows: Stores choose all their goods, bazaars provide stalls for merchants. People don’t like when one tries to masquerade as the other, or, be both.
Costco, being a store, can choose foods or goods that have been rebranded or independently sourced and no one really cares — they are still fully autonomous. They have always taken ownership of the product, so a change in supply seems to be completely within the store’s wheelhouse.
On the other hand, Amazon is a bazaar. Merchants line up, trying to get you to purchase from their stall using various tactics. Merchants get unhappy when they see that the bazaar’s guard uses their ledger to inform the head of the bazaar which merchants he could kick out. Not literally kick out, but be put in a worse position so that the bazaar’s own products are now the first ones people see.
This conflict of interest is in direct opposition of the merchants and may be in opposition of the consumers.
I personally really like Amazon Basics, as it tends to remove the brand cost. However, there’s a reason brands became popular in the first place — and the Amazon Basic brand is not one I associate with “quality”. I think the best part of the Amazon Basic brand is that it establishes a minimum bar of quality that Amazon generally needs. I know if so want the cheapest I go to them, otherwise I do my research or rely on brand reputation like I did before.
This is becoming more of the case with Whole Foods, which I’ve started to avoid. They were a quality store and that quality (seems to) have gone down. The issue with the Whole Foods purchase is that there are lower quality grocery stores already, so I’d be interested in how they’re doing with that market.
This distinction is not hard and fast even in the physical world. Just go to original department stores in Paris. They have a mix of stalls for merchants and the general store.
Also many landlords (airports, arenas, etc...) charge a percentage of sales instead of a fixed rate (and even fixed rates can be adjusted based on perceived revenue).
Amazon is basically the Internet version of WalMart. WalMart used its power to force suppliers' margins to near nothing thus lowering prices for consumers and making the WalMart heirs some of the richest people in the world. Amazon uses its power to improve the consumer experience overall thus making Bezos the richest person in the world.
The complaints leveraged at Amazon have analogues to those leveraged at WalMart. Also, WalMart has copied Amazon's online strategy including being a store/bazaar hybrid.
This area would seem to be very hard to legislate. I suspect that most of the tech giants are now partly competing with each other and partly with the next big innovations. Amazon became WalMart's competition with the rise of the Internet.
Amazon is fundamentally a store. Third party sellers on Amazon are the equivalent of Girl Scouts: the store lets them sell cookies on the premises but that’s not what the store is there for. IMO third-party sellers are close to a dark pattern since it’s so hard to distinguish them from actual sold-by-Amazon product listings.
Costco does similar things—both my ladder and my blender were things I purchased at Costco under the influence from third-party sellers demonstrating products there. Sure, the stocking and checkout were via Costco, but the same is true for Amazon.
I’ve noticed this when shopping for certain things and I don’t like it. But honestly they were a store first and they still own the entire consumer experience. Whenever a third party seller from Amazon contacts me, I am usually surprised because in my mind, I’m buying from Amazon and not from them.
Third party sellers who use FBA in particular are more like suppliers to whom Amazon can outsource part of their job to. In that case I’d say Amazon is a store, with infinite shelf space, and a very permissive policy about letting suppliers stock some of that infinite shelf space themselves sometimes.
We’re in agreement about all the basic premises, I think the key points I’d push back with are:
(1) I can’t “easily” register as a seller with Costco, but I can with Amazon (Or so I believe)
(2) The ease with which non-company merchants can enter is a key property of the bazaar vs store dichotomy. Easier to enter, more bazaar-like
(3) Given (2) and (1), it seems like Amazon wants to be both a store and a bazaar, which my initial post articulated as a “problematic” state, at the least. Even if only problematic through novelty
This doesn’t make Amazon good or bad, I can just see where it leads to new discussion
Sure, but I think it’s somewhat dubious to be immediately suspicious of any successful business model that changes the basic assumptions. Once you start enshrining “this is how we’ve always done it” into law and policy you basically outlaw innovation and start operating in a prohibited-unless-explicitly-allowed rather than allowed-unless-explicitly-prohibited mode.
Stores also sell on consignment and force companies to take back unsold goods. It’s especially the case for media like magazines and back in the day CDs.
The bazaar part of amazon is the worst part for me. It’s purely noise. I hate it and do whatever I can to filter it out. I just want the store part of amazon and like their basics brand stuff.
That's by design. You can't know whether a product legitimately came from the original manufacturer or was sent to an amazon warehouse by a third party seller. Therefore AmazonBasics is the only "trust worthy" brand on Amazon and the only reason it is trust worthy is that there is targeted campaign (by letting fraud happen) against every other brand that isn't AmazonBasicsbrand.
In certain parts of the world supermarkets are built to be two stories or more so that the ground floor may be rented out to small vendors. I don't see anybody object to that.
Most people prefer to pay a fixed fair price instead of potentially being ripped off because they don't personally know the seller. Haggling constantly is an awful waste of time
I think it is more a problem of reach\scale. If a store has a reach just like a bazaar, we need to worry about how the store operates behind the scene just like the bazaar.
Amazon seems to have only recently moved ahead of Walmart in revenue[0], so I find it hard to support the store inherently has a smaller reach than a bazaar. Am I misunderstanding your position or the nuances therein?
I think my initial post agrees with your conclusion, though, which is that trying to be both is an area that is not as defined and is part of what is causing issues.
Costco, being a store, can choose foods or goods that have been rebranded or independently sourced and no one really cares — they are still fully autonomous. They have always taken ownership of the product, so a change in supply seems to be completely within the store’s wheelhouse.
On the other hand, Amazon is a bazaar. Merchants line up, trying to get you to purchase from their stall using various tactics. Merchants get unhappy when they see that the bazaar’s guard uses their ledger to inform the head of the bazaar which merchants he could kick out. Not literally kick out, but be put in a worse position so that the bazaar’s own products are now the first ones people see.
This conflict of interest is in direct opposition of the merchants and may be in opposition of the consumers.
I personally really like Amazon Basics, as it tends to remove the brand cost. However, there’s a reason brands became popular in the first place — and the Amazon Basic brand is not one I associate with “quality”. I think the best part of the Amazon Basic brand is that it establishes a minimum bar of quality that Amazon generally needs. I know if so want the cheapest I go to them, otherwise I do my research or rely on brand reputation like I did before.
This is becoming more of the case with Whole Foods, which I’ve started to avoid. They were a quality store and that quality (seems to) have gone down. The issue with the Whole Foods purchase is that there are lower quality grocery stores already, so I’d be interested in how they’re doing with that market.