The list of things people repeat as if they are evil or some secret plan continues to surprise me: “ads”, private label, loss leaders, loyalty cards/benefits, price incentives…Amazon generational innovation is in distribution and efficiency, like every mass market retailer ever.
October 2003. What did Walmart do? Focus on distribution and efficiency. Everything they did had been done before, just not as well.
Set in 1990 -- Walmart competing with legendary K-Mart.
Walmart giving suppliers a hard time.
Walmart and private label
Walmart muscling P&G over distribution to gain price advantages over other outlets.
Walmart buys a grocery chain...1991
A thread from 3 years ago. medium.learningbyshipping.com/amazon-4648bdf…
Loyalty cards -- imagine paying $125 for discount hotel rooms and free chips so you would then gamble in the 1980s. And don't forget S&H Green Stamps and the right to pay full retail for a random catalog of stuff to buy from certain outlets peak 1970s.
The evils of "ads" on a web site are simply the online equivalent of slotting fees everywhere from a supermarket to consumer electronics. 1988 was 6 years before Amazon existed, 15 before it sold food, 20 before "advertising".
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