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I believe the difference between Amazon and a grocery store is that a storefront has to pay for its stock up front and then sell it. This means that if a store stocks a competitor, the company that created the competing product has already been paid. Stores often have agreements with distributers to return and get partial refunds for unsold stock, but not usually the full amount.

Whereas Amazon is not a storefront, it's a digital marketplace. They don't have to buy the stock of the product that is being sold, they just put up the listing and take their percentage if the listing sells, and then it's fulfilled by whatever company created the listing. This means that Amazon doesn't lose any money if a competing product doesn't sell.

Obviously amazon _does_ buy and fulfill orders themselves for many items, but not all.

I think there's a planet money on this specific topic




The difference between Amazon and a grocery store is that Amazon has access to global supply chains, Amazon also does logistics, Amazon also does web services, Amazon does its own customer analytics, Amazon uses some very sophisticated algorithms to personalise search results, Amazon sells books and videos and other digital content which it produces and sometimes publishes, Amazon makes special user-friendly control and access hardware, Amazon is also a digital storefront and backend warehouse system, which sellers pay for, at prices that Amazon sets, often with most or all of the risk loaded on the sellers.

Among others. Including aggressive tax avoidance in most jurisdictions in which it operates.

Amazon is nothing like a grocery store. Nor is it like a department store. Nor is it an online store.

It's more like a B-movie monster which is trying to devour retail, manufacturing, supply chain management, logistics, consumer analytics, advertising, content creation, web services, publishing, consumer AI - and a significant proportion of the cardboard box industry.




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