Slashdot Mirror
Amazon.com Reporting This Holiday Season Their "Best Ever"
In a refreshing break from all the doom and gloom, Amazon.com is calling this holiday season their best ever. Reporting a 44 percent rise in the number of items sold, they are refusing to provide actual dollar amounts, so it is still a very subjective measurement. "Amazon customers ordered more than 6.3 million items on Dec. 15, compared with roughly 5.4 million on its peak day last year, the company said. It shipped more than 5.6 million products on its best day, a 44 percent rise over 2007, when it shipped about 3.9 million on its busiest day. The company did not provide dollar figures and wouldn't say whether the average value of orders had changed, and the jumps it reported Friday are in line with increases Amazon has seen since it started releasing the figures in 2002."
Just because they sold more items doesn't mean they made as much of a profit as they would have during a non-holiday season.
People are buying more tangible items at cut rate prices instead of handing out gift cards - this helps retailers anywhere move more items.
The kick-to-the-balls is when the profit enters the equation - if the profit margin on those 6.3 million items was razor thin (or there were more "loss leaders" than usual) then this report is crap.
The big-box retailers taking over all the specialty shops across the US are actually reducing the diversity of goods available locally (the ACE hardware actually has more depth than Lowes in many areas for example). So aside from the obvious lower prices and "dropped at your door" convenience, there just aren't any local options for lots of us living in generica if "best Buy" doesn't carry your desired trinket.
Sheldon
On the other hand, every single thing I ordered from Amazon got there on time. Even the thing that said 'it probably won't arrive before Christmas'.
And not just Christmas stuff... Everything I've ever ordered has come in properly. I order enough that I signed up for their 'Amazon Prime' service, even. That's a lot of stuff.
It sounds to me like you're the victim of extremely bad luck.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Is anyone else totally disillusioned with consumers for things like this? The worldwide economy is crumbling because people didn't know how much was too much. And now, after people know that, they *keep* *buying*. Big screen TVs, _thousands_ in gift cards, other expensive purchases, when they should be starting to save up, conserve. When will people learn?
I think the key isn't "don't buy anything" but the key is "live within your means." The unfortunate thing is that, too many people don't know what their means are. They have no idea about their budget, or what they can afford, or how much they actually spend on X Y or Z each month. (Seriously, ask someone who doesn't budget how much they think they spend on eating out each month.)
Once a person sits down and figures out a good solid budget, money, surprisingly does not present as many issues because, instead of spending it willy-nilly, it's being managed.
And, as you suggested, saving (and investing, if your finances allow for it), is a definite must. Once you are saving and paying your bills then you can go and make that fun purchase.
Of course, that's boring. So what the heck am I saying? SPEND! SPEND MY PRETTIES!
It will be the great depression until a President that NPR likes is in office. Then it will only be a depression in looking back at who caused it.
Media bias is interesting and tricky, especially when it uses different "subtle" terminology in different contexts of different people to throw spins. Example being "recession" vs. "depression" vs. "setback" vs. "economic trouble" vs. "economic crisis." "Fee" vs. "tax." "Lawsuit" vs. "challenge." You get the idea.
IMO, Amazon's success, if they are being honest which I will give them the benefit of the doubt for, makes sense. I don't think this economic crisis is as bad as most politicians would have us believe (they're still getting paid, right?), and most people still bought gifts... but they might have not gone to Macy's or other "expensive" stores and rather looked for the cheaper options. Tighter money often drives people to look for better deals, not necessarily buy fewer items.
Now, if there was a sudden 50% drop of Americans' TV service, that might point to a serious recession. (for the record, I don't own a TV nor is there one in my house...)
Yes and No.
Damn easy, great selection, good delivery options, cheap, no crowds... brilliant.
However I'm not sure I like the new trend of having lots of items listed which they don't sell, and farming the actual selling off to smaller companies I've never heard of. And it's easy to miss the small print saying it's supplied by someone else and effectively a marketplace purchase.
Not that I have anything against the marketplace, but blurring the boundaries too much annoys me. This is especially annoying when it comes to things like SD/MemStick cards, as there has been a lot of trouble with fakes lately and I want to buy from a supplier I trust - Amazon.
All that said, it's no wonder some of the shitty high-street chains are going bankrupt. The days when you can overcharge for tat because you're the only game in town are over.
He's not going to instruct his bean counters to let on with the truth, which is that I really prefer tactile books, with pages that you turn and bookmark with real bookmarks.
There, fixed that for you. Some of us like not having bookmarks fall out of our books, or being able to carry several books with us in less space than one physical book.
This is the last Xmas I use Amazon. They botched every order, and when subcontractors ran out of stock on toys, they all waited until Xmas Eve to let me know they wouldn't be filling my order. One went ahead and charged my credit card anyhow.
Everything we ordered from Amazon, even stuff from "subcontractors" (which aren't, they're third-party sites that basically pay a fee to have their stuff listed on Amazon), came promptly when expected. Sucks to be you. Please provide feedback about the retailers who screwed you over, so that those millions of us who will continue to shop on Amazon will avoid them.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Amazon's fulfilment business is up, but that doesn't mean Amazon itself is selling more. More and more, Amazon is doing order processing for others. The fact that they're focusing on number of items shipped rather than revenue probably means revenue didn't go up.
Language may change over time, but it seems these days that the new meaning is already represented by an existing expression and that the old meaning doesn't have a new or alternate expression. It's this loss of expression that drives me to correct people's writing and speaking.
The "new meaning" of "Begging the question" is already available as "Raising the question".
When you use words intelligently you'll find that your point is often much more clearly understood. Changing language in the means mentioned primarily distracts and confuses the intention of the speaker.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
A 44% increase in items sold is nice, if the kind of items are similar to those sold last year. I wonder, however, what part of the raise comes from individual mp3 songs sold through their (very good) online music store. They don't say, so it makes me wonder what the motivation for their silence is. Hmmm...
The one item that was damaged from Amazon, out of the 30 or 40 I bought, they had the replacement in my hands 2 days after reporting it - and I haven't even returned the damaged item yet! Amazon is getting my money next year.
"The same reasoning or lack thereof applies to the Kindle (which I don't like [wordpress.com] for its DRM and other problems), since Amazon won't release sales numbers for it. "
The title of your blog is "Product Review: Kindle" but did you actually receive and review a kindle, or are you just pointing out the reasons you wouldn't like a kindle? Nowhere in your "review" do I see mention of you actually having and using the Kindle. I just see an argument as to why you don't like it (or I guess more accurately why you don't like the idea of the Kindle) and why you don't think it will succeed. I don't own one myself, but I don't know that I see a review from the posted link in your comment either.
jeff
Over here in Germany shippings quite often arrives as soon as the next day. So in terms of shipping I couldn't be happier. However Amazon does still have lots of fault. For one there is their search engine, which totally sucks, spell a single character wrong and you won't find anything (i.e. Spiderman vs Spider-man). Their product catalog is also full of stuff that is either no longer available or only through third party and there is no easy way to filter that out or to see shipping cost for those third parties in the search list. Their user interface for third party stuff is also terrible, since it is in a complete different corner of the webpage then then normal orderings and requires a seperate login, which is pretty confusing and feels like a quick hack. And last not least there is the trouble that they don't properly group items, you have a DVD and want to see the page of the sequel? Can't do that, there is no button for that. Its even worse for comic books and other stuff, finding all the books that belong to a series is quite annoying and often requires a visit to Wikipedia to find out what is out there. And finally there is their pricing scheme, which feels very arbitrary at times, since for some products the price varies greatly over the course of a few days, so it becomes quite a guessing game to buy a thing at the right time.
But even with all those faults, Amazon is still quite a bit better then all the competition I tried so far.
Damn easy, great selection, good delivery options, cheap, no crowds... brilliant.
You neglected one extraordinary feature that no one else has mentioned in any of these comments-- no sales tax. When it comes to high-dollar electronic purchases, I always go to Amazon or Newegg. Brick and mortars can not compete when they have to pile on a sales tax. For instance, I just bought a Nikon D90 camera with a couple of lenses. Sales tax in Austin, TX. boosted the price more than a hundred dollars over what Amazon was charging.
As the economy continues to crumble, more people will probably recognize this cost-saving opportunity and Amazon will be able to brag amount recession-resistant sales figures. Not that this article indicates they have actually made more money than in previous years.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
On NPR it is and always has been "Mr. Bush", but it's already "President Obama", and he's not even president yet. That said, I still listen to NPR as my primary radio news outlet. You merely have to understand the context and apply the appropriate amount of salt...
I wouldn't say media bias is "interesting". It just "is". And there are outlets to fit every bias except "neutral".
Unless things get a few orders of magnitude worse, it'll take some serious trickery to look back on this and call it a "depression". People calling it a depression are seriously misinformed as to what the Great Depression was like. People tend to view the problems they are currently experiencing as worse than what happened to other people in the past. It only stands to reason that looking back on this people will see their future economic "crisis" as worse than this one. If you stand back and look at this objectively, even today you would have a hard time saying what we have now is "worse" than what happened in 2000-2002 depending on which metrics you use.
4% isn't good enough.
When T-bills, municipal bonds, and FDIC insured CDs outperform your business, it's time to find a different strategy.
4% growth is not the same as return on investment. If those things you mentioned have a higher return on investment than your stock, you are right, But where would I find the GROWTH rate for CDs? How many FDIC insured CDs were sold last year? How many were sold this year? Where do you get the GROWTH rate for FDIC insured CDs?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
every time a company reports weak growth or a drop in revenue they always say something like this to make it seem nice.
"Every Time" - really? Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves with the absolutes shall we? Amazon's 2008 results will be published in January 2009 - so we have until then to determine your predictive accuracy. Amazon issues a post-holiday press release - has done for years. It's reported revenue increases every year in that press release that have been verified in more detail in it's annual report. It's seeming that your "every time" comment may be a little off the mark...
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
The media was talking the economy up through 2001 right up until 9/11, so much that many people still blame the 2001 recession, which lasted from March through November of 2001, on 9/11. Likewise, up until the NBER, which officially dates the beginning and ends of recessions, declared last month that a recession had begun in December of 2007, the media was largely talking about whether certain events going on in late summer and into fall of this year might pose some threat of causing a recession.
Hmmm. On the one hand, I have your subjective impression, on the other, I have the economic statistics, the waves of retail bankruptcies, etc. Which to believe, which to believe...
Its not the media that caused the two closest recessions to each other since the Great Depression to occur in the last few years, and its not the media that caused the expansion in between to feature decline for the bottom four income quintiles, with growth only in the top quintile (and mostly in the top 5%).
If your job is secure, an economic downturn is the time to look for deals. If you buy at maximum bubble, you're almost certainly paying too much.
For instance, I ride a Harley. (I actually ride mine, I don't just keep it under wraps in the garage and occasionally pose with it.) During the dot com bubble, Harleys were going for thousands over MSRP because there was a lot of new disposable income and it was considered by some to be a status symbol. When the dot coms detonated in 2001, there were suddenly a lot of nearly-new bikes on the market for thousands *less* than MSRP. If you were going to buy a bike, that would have been the time.
The same is pretty much true now. I'm told the local shops are crammed with 2008 models they can't move, and they aren't taking in any more on consignment. If you're in the market, why wait until prices go up?
I agree with you -- now is not the time to buy purchases you can't afford. Your first priority is to pay down debt and concentrate on the essentials. That said, we bought a widescreen TV in November. Why? Because our old one had crapped out and couldn't be fixed (we were victims of the Sony Grand Wega fiasco) and we lucked into a deal that got us a replacement at 1/4 retail (about 1/3 street) that would not be repeated. So we gritted our teeth, ate soup for a couple weeks, and paid cash. On the surface it may sound like mindless consumerism, but I saved more than $1K over what it would have cost me had I waited until the economy improved.
Look at it another way: Say the economy is going great guns, and you decide it's time to buy that Lexus. THEN the economy crashes. You're left with iffy job prospects AND a car you paid way to much for. That you can't sell.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
While there are advantages and disadvantages to each, it's not black-and-white. In my opinion, it is too simplistic to look to one metric as a "main" metric, but at least Amazon is upfront about it. They make an argument in their 2004 annual report, right at the front.
I have to admit, it's not a bad argument, and they did manage to survive the dot-bomb... mainly it seems that they would like to take the emphasis off of growth and look more at the long-term health and sustainability of the company.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Please cite examples.
In my experience each is referred to as "President Bush" or "President-Elect Obama" on first reference and "Mr." on subsequent references. Obama was referred to as "Senator" until he resigned his seat, because that was the correct honorific. In fact, I hear more cases of dropping the "Mr." for Obama than for Bush.
NPR, in my experience, has been much more concerned with editorial correctness on issues like this than with tailoring to some bias.
But I guess I'm just some "latte sipping liberal" defending the "drive-by media".
-