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Dropping Profits Sends Amazon In Odd Directions
tabdelgawad writes "The Washington Post has a story detailing how Amazon has purchased the rights to turn a recently published book into a feature-length movie. The article also outlines other 'strange directions' Amazon has taken in response to declining profits and a plummeting stock price, including moving into the grocery business and producing original live webcasts and streaming shows."
They probably got him to sign over the rights for nothing and then started pushing the book to set up the movie: Poor guy. Sounds like another Anthony Burgess who sold the rights to make A Clockwork Orange into a movie to The Rolling Stones for around $5,000.
This kind of reminds me of a media outlet gone wrong. Or American Idol informing people of what good music is. You really have to wonder if Amazon found this book and said "this is a really good book" or if they said "find me a book that will translate well to the big screen."
You want to make money? Find an acceptable product or well known name and shove it down America's throat. Instant cash. Examples: Mission Impossible 2, corporate boy bands with music written by teams of people, any media that follows a standard high selling formula, etc. Next up? Amazon studios presents their new movie
In TFA, they even admit it:
My work here is dung.
i don't shop there anymore because your stuff dosen't come directly from them anymore. you now have to deal with shipping fees from 6 different companies to place one order. screw that!
If Amazon wasn't too concern about pursuing profits to please Wall Street, they wouldn't be doing all this weird stuff and have a more predictable business model. Maybe it's time that Amazon accept being a blue chip company like Microsoft instead of a being a king of the jungle wonder stock like Google.
Crappy business model.
I used to work at a company that did the same thing. What they did, they did poorly, because management had a poor attitude toward employees, customers, and partners.
Rather than fix these things, which would have soiled their resumes by admitting error, they desperately attempted to cut costs to ridiculous extremes and move into new market segments that didn't in any way leverage their strengths.
Last I knew, they were still losing money (now that they can't cut any further) and competent employees were fleeing for their lives to much better and more stable opportunities.
If you haven't foed me yet, what are you waiting for?
Amazon used to be so organized, but now its categories are vitually worthless. I search for USB thumb drive, I get 10,000 thing unrelated to it even when I'm in the correct category I get non-thumb drives and there are several nice thumb drive not in the correct category. For computer stuff now I go to newegg.com, at actually organized.
Or could it be the slowing economy causing Amazon's profits to drop? I mean, having to pay for your McMansion and to fill up your 10mpg SUV has to dip into your discretionary income...but yeah. I can't imagine Amazon making movies. *shrug*
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Consider how many times you will hear "amazon.com" in reference to this movie all over the news etc... Sure it seems strange, but considering the advertising budgets that corps. the size of Amazon have, it may be a good deal. And the movie may even make some money, to boot.
I haven't shopped at Amazon in a loooooooong time (the whole multiple stores and sellers in the Amazon search, so when you go to check out you have 10 different shipping and handling fees, that drove me off...) but I have heard their name mentioned a bunch lately b/c of the movie thing....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
A. Make a big budget movie even though you are a retailer...
B. ????
-or-
A. Get rid of the whole thing where someone spends half an hour shopping on your site, filling their cart, thinking that they are getting a good deal, but when they get to the checkout they find that each item was from a different seller and all the shipping and handling is separate, so it adds like $60 to the bill.... Yeah, get rid of that, and then B may be:
B. Profit!!!!
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Lessee; we're doing worse and worse in our core competency, which we've been at for over a decade, but haven't even come close to recouping our initial investment yet, so we'll solve the problem by gathering whatever cash we can find under the sofa and plunge it into a horrendously expensive business in which we have no experience and know nothing about.
Well, yeah, sure, if you put it that way it makes perfect sense.
KFG
I must admit, though, that I wish there were an "advanced search" feature beyond the current offering, including the ability to limit results to products shipped by Amazon itself.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Hear hear. Why did Amazon massively invest in distribution & warehousing infrustructure when they clearly hope to become nothing more than a gigantic Ebay Stores ripoff?
They are ignoring their profitable core competancy to provide services that their customers neither desire nor expect from them. It used to be that I went to Ebay for used books & such and Amazon for new books, DVDs and popular consumer electronics. Now I buy new books from B&N, continue to purchase used items from Ebay and I have a netflix subscription for my DVD fix. Amazon couldn't hope to compete with Newegg for electronics. Bye bye, Amazon.
Sure, the inventory's huge, but Amazon is cumbersome to browse. More and more of their listings are obsolete and no longer stocked, and too many are just listings for 3rd-party sellers. Amazon's prices aren't that great, and the customer feedback is actually more limited than what some other sites offer. Customer support is bureaucratic too.
In the brick and mortar world, a big department store can beat small specialty stores because one-stop shopping really saves time. But it doesn't take long to hop from one website to another. If Amazon's corporate goal is still growth through diversification, it could become a dinosaur and lose business to more-narrowly focused competitors, which often sell at lower prices (e.g. Bookpool) and are easier to shop (e.g. Newegg).
A great understatement. I've ordered books that are listed "usually ships next business day" with next day shipping, only to have the book ship 2 months later. Trying to cancel this order was impossible since it "was already being processed".
Amazon used to have highly responsive customer service representatives, who had wide discretion. When they tried to organize they were fired and phone responses were outsourced to Belfast and e-mail responses to New Delhi. I assume that the webpage management has been similarly outsourced.
Amazon has always been the vendor of last resort for me. They established themselves by dumping product below cost, decimating independent bookstores in the process. Now that they have to service this debt and compete on a level playing field, they pursue "odd directions" to cover up the weakness of their core business.
I suspect that the ever overrated Jeff Bezos will eventually go down as notable failure similar to Kozomo but on a much grander scale.