This news sponsored by Captain Obvious, purveyors of fine alcoholic beverages so good, they make you forget you are an Amazon seller for a while.
Sadly, it will take a lot of changes, including political ones to get anything altered. Would EITHER party want to knock Amazon down to size since their voters are the ones that buy all the offshore crap being sold there.
Since US based sellers are only what – 45% of sellers? – there is little incentive to haul Amazon in because the population wants bargains which they offer.
Maybe a hacker collective could find a way to disable their shipping and distribution network for a month or two and it could have an effect but I suspect they have at least somewhat effective security to prevent that from happening.
No amount of political change is going to change the cost structure of Amazon.
The article addresses the cost of advertising, which is highly influenced by sellers and their desperation. There are too many sellers on Amazon, for many products. Those sellers lack the good sense to stop selling products which are in over supply and continue to push the cost of advertising up to try to fight the impossible battle to sell these products and profit.
The term hollow company is not in the vocabulary of many Amazon sellers, though their company is one.
Some offshore company makes the product and ships it to FBA for the seller. FBA determines where it is shipped and delivers it to the buyer. Amazon handles whatever customer service there is. Amazon decides where to place the product and what badges it may have earned. All these companies may contribute is how much they can afford to pay for product.
Its been a while since I’ve visited the local liquidator. But every trip has lead me to look at the FBA liquidation stocks and ask “what were they thinking?”
Lots of the sellers who are not US based have no clue what Americans buy or need, nor do they know which products are likely to be returned due to poor quality.
In spite of all of this, there are many products sold on Amazon which please and delight their buyers and make life easier and more affordable.
I ordered a walker for my wife last week. Could have gone through the hassle of getting it through Medicare, but it was so cheap on Amazon and less hassle, I bought it.
I mentioned this decision to some acquaintances who had made similar purchases. The physical therapist at the hospital told we this is a common story.
If Amazon were to be shut down tomorrow, the impact on the economy would even displease the Amazon haters.
Sounds like the flip side of what bookselling has been like since I started, where there are people willing to “race to the bottom”, where getting the sale is more important than actually making a profit.
I actually find believable the posts of people who complain that they’ve been selling for months/years and never gotten paid, because they never ran the numbers to see if they’re actually making a profit. The posts on the NSFE prove that many sellers have no clue how to run a business of any type.
Paying exorbitant advertising fees to be seen has the same effect on the bottom line as too low pricing.