What are your thoughts?
9 replies (most recent on top)
I don't think Amazon wants to run stores. They want food expertise and delivery depots. Couple that with the drones they are trying to develop and you have a very real problem.
Think bigger my friend.
Really Amazon's Whole Foods is going to take over grocery shopping? Please tell me how? Whole food store prices are outrageous and they are not very well placed geographically. They would have to build 3000 stores over the next 10 years to be a real threat. Consider the fact that there is only 1 Whole Foods store in all of Northwest Arkansas. How many cities or areas don't have one at all? So how will they go from a market share of 1.7% to match Walmart 17.3 % in 10 years when the next closest competitor is Kroger @8.9%. Lot of noise for nothing, just analysts looking at Amazons past history entering other industries. Building and running brick & mortar stores is a totally different business model and Walmart has been doing it since 1962.
There will be no antitrust with republicans in power.
If Walmart gets run down to the level of Kmart, they are as good as dead. Sure Kmarts still exist. But nobody takes them seriously. That will be Walmart in ten to fifteen years if they don't come out swinging.
My business mind: it's water under the bridge, but had Walmart offered small businesses the opportunity to buy from the DCs with a small uptick charge they could've had partnerships across the US.
Instead, the business decided to control the retail industry regardless of the devastation left behind to small businesses.
For every action there is a reaction WMT is in for one hell of a rough ride.
Amazon will never run Walmart out of business thanks to our antitrust laws...
If Walmart doesn't get real about Amazon, Lidl, and Aldi, they are the next sears holdings. Bezos is playing this chess game to win and that mofo is strategic as heck. Aldi and Lidl aren't screwing around either. Their low prices are exposing how greedy Walmart (and their shareholders) got. But you get the investors you ask for.
Walmart better get that competitive spirit back and start doing what's best for the customer again. They're about to get crushed at the high end of the market, the low end of the market, and online.
Walmart is the underdog now.
It was probably said a long time ago that Walmart wouldn't be good for consumers as they gobbled up grocery/retail putting mom and pop stores out of business. Walmart didn't care about those claims when they were winning in retail. But now someone smarter is controlling the chess game and Walmart doesn't like it, imagine that.
Here is what Robert Reich had to say on it - things are about to get interesting:
This morning, Amazon.com announced plans to buy Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion.
This means Amazon is now going to compete head on with Walmart, as well as Target, Costco, and Kroger (all of whose stock prices tumbled on the news). Within 10 years, they'll all be gone. Amazon is on the verge of owning American retailing.
Heads up: At the rate they’re going, within 20 years Amazon, Google, and Apple (possibly along with Microsoft and Facebook) will dominate the American economy. Watch as they begin to take over finance and the media.
Will this be good for consumers? No. With that kind of economic power, they'll be able to raise prices. Good for American democracy? No. With that kind of power, they'll basically run the government -- as did railroads and oil in the Gilded Age. What's the answer? Revive antitrust.
Anyhow, we should expect some antitrust moves soon...