For people like me that never get near shops to buy things in the day and only have places like tescos or sainsburys open when I'm not at work places like Amazon are useful.
They also seems to be getting more and more useful as the proceed to open more and more stores, it used to be just books but now you can get your books, dvd's, games, appliances, clothing, watches, shoes, and now according to their front page Babies. Now I take no judgement at their move into child trafficking it might be useful some day if I need some stem cells or a handy distraction in a fight or something.
It does seem like they are becoming a one stop shop for anything you could want, the US version has started selling food as well, how long before we too can get our groceries at amazon along with a new fridge freezer to keep them in.
Still unlike their meat space competitors in the sell everything that's not nailed down market, they repeatedly struggle to turn a profit despite huge turn over. I guess the fact they work on such slim margins that makes their stuff so attractive to joe "skinflint" public doesn't make for a very profitable business.
Maybe they need to branch out into the real world start shops where they sell the same stuff at a small premium
Comments
Hmm. I've read bad things about their grocery shop in the states. Neil Gaiman says:
"Lots of people wrote and told me I could order Marmite from Amazon.com -- and I did! It just arrived. Unfortunately two bottles (of twelve) were smashed in shipping, and I discovered that Amazon won't let you return or refund grocery items, so I don't think I'll be ordering groceries from Amazon again."
Yeah I'm not sure whether I would by food stuffs from amazon unless it was something indestructible, they do after all use pretty cheap shipping methods. At least they stopped using royal mail, course they now use tnt mail instead not sure if that will decrease the shoe print in middle of package incidence rate.
Some of their stuff seems to be amazon acting as a portal for some other retailer as well so it could end up where you are buying it from tescos anyway.