
Amazon says 2008 holiday season was 'best ever' - gibsonf1
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Amazon-says-2008-holiday-apf-13918688.html
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chris11
I'm not surprised. Amazon is usually cheaper than most brick and mortar
stores. I ended up purchasing a couple books last minute for Christmas, and
when I got home, I realized that Borders was charging nearly 50% more than
amazon charged. Plus I had to deal with the traffic, crowded store, and bad
customer service.

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pmorici
Plus they have nearly neutralized the traditional stores only real advantage
ie: "I need it now" with Amazon Prime which offers free 2 day shipping and
next day shipping for a couple bucks.

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potatolicious
Up here in Vancouver, Canada, the snow has been coming down much harder than
most years, and a lot of shoppers are cooped up in their houses. Amazon and
other online stores are making a killing off the bad weather.

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smhinsey
Are deliveries still getting through despite the weather or something? I've
heard this a couple of times and it confuses me. It seems like I'd be more
likely to use Amazon if the weather was beautiful because I'd rather not spend
those days in the mall, since they're open 24 hours, but the whole thing
hinges on fedex driving where you can't, which is weird to me.

Which is not to say that I question the premise of your comment, it's just
that it seems like a bit of a nonsequitor in that while they correlate, it's
not clear to me that there is a causal relationship at play, but then again,
I've done no research, but as people have pointed out elsewhere, they are
cheaper, and it seems that they are probably succeeding for the same reason
Wal-Mart is.

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potatolicious
They are actually - days like these the delivery guys don't get paid enough :)

It's not as if the roads are sealed or anything, but there's enough snow out
there that most people are ill-equipped and ill-trained to deal with it. Cars
are sliding off the roads because of lack of snow tires, and people are
getting beached up all over the place. Not a pretty sight. But a good driver
with snow tires/chains is not altogether too handicapped.

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lionheart
This is the kind of thing that gives me hope that, even with this horrible
economy, web-based start ups like the one I'm working on can still succeed.

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DenisM
I work on iPhone software and our sales were a lot worse than November (40%
less). Couple others reported the same. I guess people are buying more gifts
than for themselves, and app store has no notion of a gift yet. There was
nothing there last year, so can't compare.

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quantumhobbit
Hopefully there will be a post-Christmas bump as people cash in on iTunes gift
cards.

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DenisM
Yep. iTunes connect is down for maintenance so I can't even tell what's going
on until tomorrow or so.

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seiji
Weren't people saying AWS components would go down during the holidays because
it was actually Amazon's extra holiday capacity?

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wheels
That may have been Amazon's way of running an experiment in the off season to
see if it was a viable service and beefing it up once they saw it catching on.

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dustineichler
I'm a big believer that innovation wins, but that should go without saying.
Good for them, good for us all.

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puzzle-out
The question is: would Amazon's turnover had been even higher without the
downturn? At the very least, the rebirth of the discriminate, 'rational' buyer
is great news for well-run etailers, who can fully leverage the industy's low
overhead base.

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rokhayakebe
This is mostly due to facts outside of Amazon behavior: \- Increase in
Internet penetration. \- Consumers being more open to entering their credit
card number online. \- Increase in number of price comparison startups.

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ComputerGuru
The irony: CNN reports 2008 is one of the worst holiday seasons _ever_ for
retailers across America:
[http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/26/news/economy/holidaysales_fi...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/26/news/economy/holidaysales_finalnumbers/index.htm?postversion=2008122611)

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anewaccountname
This was a record year: up 2% over last year, which itself was a record year.
It is just that "2%" is a smaller increase than ever before. That is actually
surprising; last year everyone had huge, fake, bubble-wealth; this year they
don't. And they still spent more.

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ojbyrne
If you read the article, that 2.2% in the table was an early estimate - actual
results are being described as down significantly (i.e. negative year over
year).

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anewaccountname
Good catch; nonetheless, they aren't saying we're spending less on Christmas
presents than we did in say, 1950.

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ojbyrne
There's going to be some growth due to population increases.

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vaksel
Not surprising. People want to save money nowadays, so they flock to the
internet to find deals. Amazon is more or less for the lazy, those who don't
want to look at 100 web stores, but still want a decent deal.

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pmorici
or people who have better things to do with their time than look at 100 web
stores. Not to mention Amazon Prime members get free two day shipping and
heavily discounted next day shipping so you could wait until Dec. 23 to do all
of your shopping and have all your items by the 24th. I don't know any other
web store that can give you that deal even if they are a couple bucks cheaper
on some things.

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sachinag
I think Zappos also had free overnight shipping this Christmas - they hit $1B
in sales and are almost always _more_ expensive than Amazon. Good customer
service pays off.

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brandnewlow
Slate calls BS on the whole thing:

<http://www.slate.com/id/2207537/>

