Amazon Cutting Prices at Whole Foods

That evil practitioner of capitalism, Jeff Bezos, strikes again. Lowering prices for consumers; does the man have no shame?

@TNA" and the rest of the economic-illiterates: When can we expect the great leader to take action against this man? We must stop him before our products become too cheap!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-2…

35 Comments
 
Controversial
"jec" Apparently people can't read OPs sarcasm

No, there are just an amusing amount of Trump supporters on this site who throw monkey shit at anything negative said about dear leader.

This comment alone will catch 6-8 monkey shits just from people being babies

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 
"MonacoMonkey" Whole Foods makes up LESS than 1.9% of US food sales. Put things in perspective.

Yeah I can tell, fatties are eerrrryywhere

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
"Dances with Dachshunds" I wonder if Amazon will take losses on their grocery business for the larger strategy, and, if so, is that a legal practice? It's a monopolistic practice to price at a loss to run competitors out of business.

There's nothing wrong with monopolistic practices in a free marketplace (no government involvement). Let's assume that AMZN prices their products at such a low price that they make losses on them: Is that not great for consumers? That's capitalism functioning to improve the lives of humans through lower prices. If I recall correctly, Standard Oil did the same thing: They drove oil prices so low that their competitors could not compete. The people who benefited most from this were consumers.

The only type of monopolies that people should be afraid of are government-backed monopolies. I have no doubt that, assuming no government involvement, there will come a time when Google, Amazon, Facebook, and every other company in existence are overtaken by competitors.

 
Best Response
"lwmg"
"Dances with Dachshunds" I wonder if Amazon will take losses on their grocery business for the larger strategy, and, if so, is that a legal practice? It's a monopolistic practice to price at a loss to run competitors out of business.
There's nothing wrong with monopolistic practices in a free marketplace (no government involvement). Let's assume that AMZN prices their products at such a low price that they make losses on them: Is that not great for consumers? That's capitalism functioning to improve the lives of humans through lower prices. If I recall correctly, Standard Oil did the same thing: They drove oil prices so low that their competitors could not compete. The people who benefited most from this were consumers.

The only type of monopolies that people should be afraid of are government-backed monopolies. I have no doubt that, assuming no government involvement, there will come a time when Google, Amazon, Facebook, and every other company in existence are overtaken by competitors.

I mean, I'm a free market capitalist, but I don't necessarily support predatory pricing if the purpose is to drive out your competitors and establish a monopoly. If that's the case then lower prices is only temporarily good for consumers.

But regardless of what I think, it's really an issue for the law to address. Predatory pricing is, technically, an anti-trust violation. So whether or not Amazon will ever get charged is something that is above my pay grade.

Array
 

Just saw the headlines about price cuts. I've gotta say that as a consumer I am pretty happy about this. Went shopping at Whole Foods two Fridays ago and spent $91. One week later I went to Harris Teeter and got similar stuff + more and spent $58. I guess now that I think about it, Whole Foods' prices have probably been so high that they have caused stagnant growth. Given the outrageous WF prices, it would be pretty hard to justify calling what they're doing "predatory pricing," especially since they'll likely still be more expensive than competing grocery stores.

Array
 

No word on Avocados, but I did swing but WF last night and saw a group of bored trophy wives huddled around the elongated vegs. Insider info leaves me to believe that we should be long cucumbers and bananas.

26 Broadway where's your sense of humor?
 

You ever slide a pineapple up and grill it? Try it. So good edit: went to fix typo of "slide" to "slice" but it's a funny typo. Slide up in a pineapple bling blaw

heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/
 

Good luck with that. With a net profit margin of 3% and retailers getting kicked in the nuts, they are going to make it even lower, lol.

You killed the Greece spread goes up, spread goes down, from Wall Street they all play like a freak, Goldman Sachs 'o beat.
 

I'm still trying to understand the true purpose of getting into one of the WORST industries ever with regard to profitability (2.3% in 2016, among the 15 worst). What's next? Amazon restaurants? Amazon commercial banking? Amazon gas stations?

The only thing that seems to make sense is that Amazon is willing to make groceries a loss leader (or a break-even scenario) in order to rope in more consumers into the Amazon network.

Array
 

That’s not what Amazon is doing. There are numerous reasons for the acquisition that were already mentioned, but here are two that were not. First, food is already a popular online category and Amazon wants to develop a private label. Speaking of profit margins, private label products are significantly more profitable. But if you want to develop products/product lines you need lots of data and info on consumer behavior and that’s where Whole Foods comes in.

Second, remember that you buy groceries multiple times a week, i.e. significantly more often than you buy other stuff on Amazon. And by acquiring Whole Foods and selling their stuff online they will increase site traffic and improve sales in other product categories as well. Amazon is really a collection of services; the reason Amazon is producing video content is not to make money from video content, but to make money from everything that you buy once you become an addicted Prime user that stops buying stuff elsewhere. It doesn't matter whether Whole Foods will be profitable (although it probably will be), because as long as you spend more money on the Grand Bezos Platform, it doesn't matter where the profit is made.

 

I'm not sure they will be taking losses, but the thing to remember about Amazon's low margins is that they keep on investing in their infrastructure and supply chain, particularly in foreign countries, so once they get to scale, the margins will shoot up when CapEx goes down.

Second of all, Whole Foods is partly about getting people into the Amazon network, sure, but it's also about selling groceries online more easily which they can charge more for, the real estate that will allow them to have stable pickup points for online orders of anything really, and as they merge their existing supply and distribution network with Whole Foods', I would think it's only natural they would generate enough cost savings to lower prices at least a little bit without even lowering margins at Whole Foods.

 

They obviously want to sell groceries online and bought Whole Foods to establish a platform, but the profitability is non existent, Also Amazon mostly makes money on AWS services so it would make more sense to buy a data center, but who cares because they bought them "for free", right?

You killed the Greece spread goes up, spread goes down, from Wall Street they all play like a freak, Goldman Sachs 'o beat.
 

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heister: Look at all these wannabe richies hating on an expensive salad. https://arthuxtable.com/

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