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by dimitrios1 1789 days ago
Which one seems more likely to you:

a. Amazon solves brick and mortar b. Walmart solves online sales.

Given the way things are going with Amazon essentially throwing in the towel with counterfeit reviews and products, I would put my money on Walmart eating Amazon's lunch this decade.

Don't forget political influence as well. Walmart has a large fraction of congress on bankroll.

1 comments

You started out by claiming "they don't compete with Walmart" because "Walmart almost doubled Amazon's revenue last year". But since that's not true you've moved the goal post and now you're claiming "Walmart eating Amazon's lunch this decade" is the most likely scenario because Amazon has a counterfeit product problem and Walmart has political connections.

I don't think you understand just how insignificant the counterfeit issue is. Amazon reports it as 0.01% of sales, but even they're off by a factor of 100 that's just 1%. And 1% of their .com revenue is still less than 0.5% of their overall revenue because most of Amazon's profits come from AWS.

> Amazon solves brick and mortar

What is there to solve? Amazon has a logistics infrastructure that Walmart can't touch. If they decided to open a big box store do you really thing the counterfeit issues in their affiliate program would harm them? It's not like they'd put affiliate merchandise on the floor. I feel like they could figure out how to unload trucks to retail shelves and do in person payment processing at least as well as Walmart.

> Walmart solves online sales.

Walmart has been competing with Amazon in online sales for a decade, how's that going? Walmart has nothing to compete with Amazon's Audible, Echo, Ring, Blink, or Prime offerings. Sure they have free shipping with Walmart+ and an affiliate program but is that enough? They've tried countless times to compete against Amazon and failed, most recently they sold Vudo off. At the same time Amazon has launched countless brands and new products with great success.

Amazon.com's tone deaf Billionaire founder and their treatment of their workers are a far greater risk to them than Walmart. But bad reputation and consumer dislike aren't going to kill Amazon anymore than they've done so with Walmart who has infamy for destroying both small town America and America's manufacturing infrastructure.

Honestly I'm not sure why you'd want either of these companies to succeed.

> But since that's not true you've moved the goal post

I said "about" 2x. Ok, about doing some heavy lifting, so it's closer to about 1.5 for 2020, during a pandemic. What's a typical year? Ah but you are so focused on technically correct, you missed the forest for the trees. My point still remains. The gulf between what Amazon sells and Walmart sells is so wide, it's hardly seen as "competing". Amazon themselves have admitted to this fact (and have used this fact to shield themselves from anti-competitive legislation. One of their favorite moves is to point at Walmart and say "they are the big guys, not us") So these are just established facts, not moving any sort of goal posts. I am not here to defend a thesis or dissertation, we are having a casual conversation on the internet.

I guess you must be one of those guys who demands zero margin of error in their conversations? If so, you must be fun at parties.

> Honestly I'm not sure why you'd want either of these companies to succeed.

Speaking of fallacies, never did I say I want them to succeed, so here's your straw man back. I am observing the reality of what is, and what is likely to happen.

> I am observing the reality of what is, and what is likely to happen.

Your supporting arguments include counterfeiting and soon to be dead politicians as reasons why Amazon will fail but are reality based observations about what's likely to happen?

Also if you don't think Amazon/Bezos has any political sway then you're not paying attention to what's been happening with Pentagon or NASA contracts.