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Amazon Offers Whole Foods Discounts To Prime Members (reuters.com)
Amazon-owned Whole Foods debuted a loyalty program on Wednesday that offers special discounts to Prime members, including 10 percent off hundreds of sale items and rotating weekly specials. "The new loyalty strategy will test whether Amazon's $13.7 billion deal for Whole Foods brings much-feared disruption and an intensified price war to the $800 billion U.S. grocery industry dominated by Walmart and Kroger," reports Reuters. From the report: Those perks are available now in Florida and will roll out to all other stores starting this summer. Amazon previously announced free two-hour delivery from Whole Foods stores for members of Prime, its subscription club with fast shipping and video streaming. The new perks could make Whole Foods cheaper than conventional grocers for about 8 million of its customers who already subscribe to Amazon Prime, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. Prime members scan an app or input their phone numbers at checkout to receive the discounts.
is cheaper than Whole Foods, has just as much organic produce, and has union workers that aren't treated as disposible tissues to wipe Bezos' butt with. I'd rather support them than a destructive/disruptive company like Amazon...
that's loyal
if Prime video services worked on my non Fire android box.
(and Prime didn't increase in price 10-20% every year)
Or if a Whole Foods existed closer than 500 miles from where I lived.
Or if there weren't 2 organic farm stores less than 1/2 mile from my house with prices less than 1/4 the local stores prices.
I think they may be putting something in all those red pills you take
The difference between you and me, is I refused to take any pills - I don't need to alter anything because I already see clearly, apparently the rest of you have some significant distortion you cannot see beyond due to things you swallow all the time without question. The fact that you pretend to understand what is going on with unions when you have never had a union job in your life, or even a deep friendship with union workers, is pretty laughable...
You claim my vision is stupid, but I merely show you the lines deep within the drawing. Choose to reject this base understanding of the firmament at your peril.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Inputting the phone number of a prime member at checkout sounds like a big opportunity for fraud, so I have to think that this is a loss leading measure to drive traffic to those stores. I suppose they'll never tell us how much it helps.
and in nearly every market, big and small.
grocery is the lion's share of walmart's business. they ring up a half trillion annually in revenues. over 55% of sales is grocery. walmart sells more *grocery* than amazon does in total sales of *everything*. walmart knows grocery. they know grocery shoppers. they have leverage with manufacturers that would make even bezos wet between the legs.
not a fan of walmart (or amazon, for that matter)... but this is one area amazon cannot compete in, not yet and not for a long time, not even with whole foods. they aren't going to open thousands of 100,000 square foot stores coast-to-coast. they aren't going to ship 100s of billions worth of grocery orders, including perishables (including frozen, refrigerated, produce and deli), every year, either.
about the only thing that might, possibly, put a dent in walmart's stranglehold of the american grocery market would be a partnership between something like costco, target, and a kroger and/or a national grocery wholesaler like supervalu that has their own stores *and* distributes to other chains and independents located in a lot of the same markets (of all sizes) that walmart operates in. even that would be a long-shot.. walmart isn't going to give up any market position willingly.
no, cisco makes ios, numbskull.
no, Blackberry makes ios (or at least the kernel).
lucm, indeed.
You fuckwits don't realize what you are doing to yourselves and to independent stores.
I'm not an Amazon fan, but I hate independent stores more with their shitty business hours and the usual absence of ways to go back and check previous orders so I don't buy the same season of GoT for mother's days two years in a row.
lucm, indeed.
Local grocery stores: one is 24 hr, one is open till 11pm-12am.
Game of Thrones? You *buy* DVD's in 2018? What with streaming services, Torrents, and DVD burning?
... but I come from a union family. Three generations of union members ...
Me too, grandfather and father. Some of the following coming from a dinner table conversation when I asked my dad why he was on strike. I had visited the picket lines earlier in the day.
Most of the post-WWII prosperity and middle-class growth in the US was thanks to the labor movement.
Yes and no. The labor movements great advances had already occurred before WW2. Post-war labor was coasting on old glories, the important stuff was enshrined into law not labor contracts by then. Labor's important battles had been won. Post-war labor became a "racket" according to my 40+ year union member grandfather, working hard to perpetuate its own existence and doing little for the workers. My eventually 40+ year union member father concurred. Both speak highly of the unions in the decades before WW2, but after, a very different thing. The point about the important stuff being law, that union contracts were more about preserving union power and finances and not so much about the workers, that came from these union members.
Unions became weaker not merely due to politicians but because workers recognized that big labor had become a racket that did little for them, they lost worker respect, they lost influence with workers and as a result lost influence among politicians.
And today, left-wing politicians *talk* about unions, but when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is these left-wing politicians go non-union just like the CEOs. For example the California San Francisco bay area buying Chinese steel for bridge projects.
Post WW2 economic success was due to our main economic competitors being wrecked by the war, post-war spending of wartime savings, and the economic stimulus of rebuilding and feeding various devastated parts of the world. It was a time where nearly any idiot manager or CEO could make a buck, its an incredibly poor time to look at for business and economic examples. As you learn in econ 101, comparison require all other things to be equal. And 1950s America was a very unique atypical situation.
Welcome to capitalism...
If we choose to support small stores who charge higher prices, we the customers suffer in the short term.
If we don't support them, we suffer in the long term.
Capitalism encourages short term thinking, if you're harming yourself in the short term in the hopes of a long term gain you may not be around in the long term.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Amazon will, like a parasitic vine, choke the life out of most if not all alternatives, and once that is done, do you think Amazon will continue to give you reasonable prices ? If you do think that is going to happen, you are more naive than most young children.
You're naive if you think that not shopping at Amazon is going to make a difference.
Every single store does this where I live, in a different form. You get points onto your plastic card, which you can use for further purchases. Every item is priced up, unless you are a loyal buyer.
You're naive if you think that not shopping at Amazon is going to make a difference.
It might slow down progress slightly. It would be nice if we could get faster at being compassionate instead of having to forestall the future, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It might slow down progress slightly.
What you're seeing now *is* already slowed down slightly.
You're naive if you think that not shopping at Amazon is going to make a difference.
That's a wonderful attitude to have. You probably don't vote, either, do you?
I don't respond to AC's.
You probably don't vote, either, do you?
Depends. Often I do not, simply because I can't find any candidate that I like. The attitude is called 'realism', by the way. I'd rather focus my limited energy on things were I can actually make a change.
is cheaper than Whole Foods
Not exactly a high bar to set. Whole Foods sells to wealthy folks (not price sensitive) in well to do locations and prices accordingly.
has just as much organic produce
You do realize Whole Foods sells more than just organic produce, right? And is the produce they sell of equal quality? My guess is probably not even if it is acceptable.
and has union workers that aren't treated as disposible tissues to wipe Bezos' butt with.
I have nothing against unions. My father was a lifelong union member and that one fact alone helped paid for most of my education. I support the unions as a mechanism to fight management abuse and waste. But the simple fact is that many unions have long ago abandoned workers rights as their primary goal and have turned into an extortion racket that only serve to drive up prices for me as the customer with no improvement in customer service or productivity. If management is actually treating the workers badly then unions are a great answer. Problem is that if a union is successful they lose focus and gradually drive up prices and make the company less competitive because they don't know how to cooperate with management.
So explain to me what your union is doing that makes me care as a customer. I see no evidence that Whole Foods workers are treated worse than workers at other grocery store chains and you certainly haven't provided any. How to they improve prices, customer service, product selection, or in any way improve my experience as a customer?
I'd rather support them than a destructive/disruptive company like Amazon...
And I'd rather have a company that actually gives a shit about serving MY needs. Amazon is forcing a whole bunch of companies to step their game up to keep my business. Say what you want about Amazon, they do customer service very well and they provide a lot of value and are constantly improving and adding services. Companies that do not adopt a similar attitude deserve to go out of business.
I call it being a self asshole. But hey, tomato/tomato, right?
I don't respond to AC's.
"selfish" was the word I was going for, obviously.
I don't respond to AC's.
If you get their credit card, you get 5% back on all your Amazon and Whole Foods purchases. If you assume you would otherwise get 1% back on other typical rewards cards, that's still 4% more. You need to spend $60/week to come out ahead. Anyone who shops at Whole Foods on a regular basis already does that, so Prime saves money.
Even if you had a 2% rewards card, you would need to spend $80/week. Prime still saves money.
And that's just for the grocery shopping alone, ignoring the various other benefits.
Business.
Either Amazon, or Whole Foods, are losing money on this. Maybe it's market-capture. Maybe it's just bringing the profit margin ever-lower.
But if you want to compete you can only do two things: Do the same, or ignore it and let them suffer losses that you're not willing to suffer.
If you're only paying for Prime what you save every time you go into Whole Foods, they are making a loss of 11 times that, even if you only go once a month.
In the same way that Prime Video (despite "giving away" movies to all their Prime subscribers) isn't knocking Netflix out of the market, a deal like this won't knock everyone else out of the market. Netflix still has three times as many users as Amazon Prime Video does. And they are paying SPECIFICALLY for Netflix, not getting it bundled as a freebie on something they already buy for other reasons.
Amazon is certainly a big player and scary competition to have, but they have tried to penetrate all kinds of markets and failed in many of them. Same with Spotify vs iTunes vs Prime Music.
Hell, I used Amazon's "Fresh" delivery service precisely once and wouldn't touch it again. In the UK, it's basically one of the cheapest supermarkets (Morrison's) and the service is pathetic compared to any other supermarket's online service.
Personally, I'd keep doing business. Hell, maybe even approach other providers and try to do a similar deal. But I wouldn't panic about anything other than staying competitive and providing a better service.
The new perks could make Whole Foods cheaper than conventional grocers
Is there a difference? The produce section of WF has little signs "conventionally grown in Mexico" on most of the veggies. There is a very, very small section of organic food.
The problem with that thesis is that when Europe rebuilt, they did so with a robust labor movement in place and have since overtaken the US in terms of economic mobility and the economic factors that made up what used to be called the "American Dream". We killed the golden goose in the US by suppressing the labor movement. Fortunately, it's coming back.
European success and US failure were not due to organized labor in the 1960s and beyond. It had far more to do with the cultural imperative of buying locally. For example far more Europeans would consider where something was made, give it some consideration in their purchasing decisions, while in the US we pretty much only considered price. Were you around in the 1970s, did you notice all the "Save a Job, Buy American" bumper stickers? How true that was, sadly it was ignored. The post-war suffering of Europeans taught them the value of buying local, the post-war excess of the US contributed to us losing that wisdom.
European consumers supported European industry and workers, US consumers abandoned US industry and workers. Union membership had little to do with it. Of course, US Union corruption may have made Americans a little less sympathetic to the Union's "Buy American" campaigns.
US Labor was not suppressed. It was ignored by consumers and workers due to its corruption and by politicians due to its impotence (it could no longer deliver the worker's votes). Union leadership killed US labor.