[StressedDev]

Retail is extremely competitive. Amazon does not have the best prices, and has a horrible experience for shopping. It's basically a specialized search engine with lots of ads at this point. Also, the things which made Amazon shopping a no-brainer are gone. Items no longer always arrive within two days if you have Prime, there are lots of poor-quality items, and it's hard to find what you really want. Finally, it's obvious Amazon's retail employees are not customer obsessed. Look at the web site design, and ask yourself if you would design a retail web site like Amazon's?

My guess is Amazon's retail business will eventually start declining as customers discover it's relatively expensive, and it's too easy to buy low quality items.

[onion2k]

Prime is Amazon's moat though. More than 100 million people subscribe to a service that locks them into choosing Amazon first. People with Prime choose Amazon over going to a physical store. It's what took Amazon out of being an e-commerce business and into being a retail business. Don't underestimate how important Prime is to Amazon - it's literally a vendor lock-in that generates billions directly through fees and tens of billions indirectly through additional sales.

[gen220]

It is until it isn’t. The value of prime has largely being hollowed out and competed away in the last five years, from my perspective as a recently-cancelled Prime member.

When the next recession comes, look for the diff in churn rate between Prime and Costco memberships.

[parpfish]

I think an under appreciated part of their most is that people hate logging in to things and making new accounts.

I know there have been times where I see a product is a little cheaper on the actual brand website but I decide to just order with Amazon rather than creating an account to place a single order on the other site.

I tell myself that it’s about privacy and minimizing exposure to future breaches, but really it’s just that I don’t want to go through the whole create a password/enter your card and address/wait for marketing emails you need to unsubscribe from loop

[ghaff]

For me it's just about time and laziness. I accept for large and specialized purchases, it's worth potentially going to someplace else to buy something. But for some run of the mill $20 item? I probably spend a few minutes on Amazon and call it a day. I usually get the item in a day or two and, if I don't? It's still probably faster than I would get it elsewhere and it probably doesn't matter.