I think jet.com was a foolish acquisition (at a foolish price), and will be written off in 5 years.<p>Having said that, I think amazon has left a glaring gap in their armor: you cannot trust your purchases from them anymore, and more and more people are figuring it out.<p>I have known for a few years to save my high-dollar purchases for more reputable retailers. I bought an all-clad pan from amazon that I am convinced is a factory 2nd. Now, if I want a new Le Creuset, I get it from Williams-Sonoma or Macy's or someplace I can trust.<p>More recently, however, I realized even low-end purchases are not worth my time. I wanted to buy some frosting tips. After half an hour on Amazon, reading reviews accusing products of being shoddy knock-offs that rust, warp, etc., I realized it's much faster to just drive to a store and buy them. That's what I did, drove to Michael's and bought a set for close to the same price.<p>I will not be renewing my Amazon Prime membership this year. There's just not enough left that I am willing to buy there to bother.<p>This is all surprising, cause Bezos is an absolute beast. In fact, if you told me I had to compete against one of the top tech CEOs, I would pray it wasn't him (I would hope for Larry Page...).<p>How he is missing something so big, this sowing of mistrust, I can't understand. Or it's possible I don't see the bigger game.
Yes.<p>I've already switched some of my purchases to Jet.com because:
1) I don't want the bother of trying to figure out that products are "real" and not knock-offs
2) For some items (most recently under bed storage containers) I need to know the exact dimensions and I could easily find that on Jet but not on Amazon<p>However, I still default to Amazon for other items. So I think Wal-Mart can compete, but I seriously doubt that they will beat Amazon.<p>Jeff Bezos is the Sam Walton of this generation of retail and I don't see anything changing that anytime soon.
To this day I am still shocked Wal-Mart didn't (and still doesn't) run same day shipping of all of its items in store at prices that beat Amazon's.<p>Not only would this crush Amazon, but would simultaneously restore Walmart's reputation as the storefront itself could be more minimalist as more of its space would be used mainly for warehousing.<p>Seriously. Why aren't they doing this? Does it cost a few orders of magnitude higher than I'm thinking? Wal-Mart presumably has tabs on what its inventory at its own stores are (at least the website does). Wal-Mart, at its peak is pretty close to most people's houses. All they really need is a good operational workflow to reduce the amount of time wasted on inefficient deliveries.
I've moved more and more away from shopping locally at catch-all stores like WalMart/Target. When I can, I try to just buy online, I like the convenience.<p>They could immediately compete if they offered same-day deliveries ala what Amazon does in certain premium (read: not yours) markets; except for most of America. Branded cars delivering groceries and goods same-day to 90+% of America would be a slam-dunk; and something that would take Amazon years to compete with. Considering all the cash these kinds of companies swim in, it seems like a no-brainer to me. Easy enough for the pizza companies, anyway.<p>In fact, there's already one local grocery chain offering delivery (and free even, when you spend > $X). To my knowledge, this is becoming more and more popular across the US.