Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Just Made Shopping at Whole Foods Cheaper (businessinsider.com)
Whole Foods just got less expensive. From a report: On Monday, the day that Amazon's $13.7 billion acquisition of the grocer went through, prices on certain Whole Foods items immediately dropped. On Friday, Business Insider visited a Whole Foods location in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and checked the prices on 15 items (including a few variations on similar items) mentioned by the companies. The total cost of the basket on Friday -- pre-acquisition -- was $97.76. On Monday, we returned to the Gowanus Whole Foods and checked back in on the same items. This time, the total cost of the 15 items was $75.85. That's a nearly 23% drop in the total cost. Whole Trade Banana: 30 cents (Price dropped to $0.49 a pound from $0.79). Lean Ground Beef: $2 (Price dropped to $4.99 a pound from $6.99). Local Grass-Fed 85% Lean Ground Beef: $4 (Price dropped to $6.99 a pound from $10.99). Four-pack of Organic Avocado: $0 (Price stayed at $6.99 for a pack of four). Hass Avocados: $1.01 (Price dropped to $1.49 each from $2.50) for instance.
That's the siren song of growing monopolies - economies of scale let them lower prices significantly below the competition... at least until the competition crumbles.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I missed the part in the article where it mentioned the new technologies they are utilizing to achieve this price reduction.
Do we really need grocery store slashvertisements?
Or, buy the cheapest you can find, because price is intrinsically linked to the number and extent of median processes and it costs less to fly bananas to countries than it does to try to heat greenhouses to grow them in that country.
And then give the difference to Greenpeace or whatever. Or use it to plant your own garden.
Just because you want to save the planet, doesn't mean you need to be a hippie living in a tree.
If food is this cheap, people won't see the value in socialism...
Oh? Well in that case, I suppose the government should stop subsidizing farmers. What's that? You dont know shit about agriculture? Oh my.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They really should stop subsidizing farmers though. The U.S. spends billions of dollars on farm subsidies that keep prices artificially high while at the same time spending billions of dollars on food stamps because some people can't afford food. It's utter madness to be doing both at the same time. The original justifications for having farm subsidies are no longer relevant and most of the subsidies aren't going to small family farms, but to corporations or those who don't need them.
This is an image by someone that doesn't understand the stock market. Market capitalization is something completely different from market share. Market cap is just how much it would take to buy all the shares of a company at the current market price. If some idiot bought Joe's general store in the middle of nowhere for 1 trillion dollars, you would have the same picture except that Joe's would now take up half the picture. A quick peek at the most recent income statement of Wal Mart and Amazon shows Amazon had approx. 135 billion in gross revenue in 2016 while Wal Mart grossed approx. 436 billion. So Amazon the company is selling on the public stock market for twice the price of Wal Mart with a third of the gross revenue. As far as net income goes, lets not even go there. So as far as market share goes, Wal Mart seems to have about triple the retail market share that Amazon does.
TLDR - the picture is easy to misinterpret for those that don't understand the stock market.