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Comment by fiddlerwoaroof | Hacker News Reader

Isn’t it still the case that Walmart and similar brick and mortar stores have significantly higher revenue than Amazon’s e-commerce revenue? If anything, it’s worse for traditional stores because they have limited shelf space and so store brands can prevent name brands from even being available.

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No, no it isn’t the case. Walmart is the only one with more revenue, but they don’t have AWS margins to prop up everything else. I think we’d all be better off if we didn’t have a 2-horse race for 90% of our purchases…

Target (#3)had $93b in revenue in FY2020. Amazon e-commerce had $120b.

https://corporate.target.com/annual-reports/2020

https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1218313/amazon-revenue-de...

I'd agree if we had a 2-horse race, but I don't see it, there are a ton of competing retail stores both online and offline.

And especially online, it's not like you're limited geographically where say your only store that has what you want is a big Walmart, you have access to hundreds of online retailer to choose from.

Target needs to do same day delivery and then they will win hands down. It does not take an MBA to figure this out and I don't know why they have not done it yet.

They already do this and it's called Shipt. There's a delivery charge (about $9.99) or yearly membership available.

Its because same day delivery takes a rather large investment in logistics systems that they may not have ready to go.

This is easy. Offer a target membership for $100 a year. Pay employees who live nearby to deliver. Easy.

Here are the results of my google search for "target same day delivery"

https://www.target.com/c/same-day-delivery/-/N-bswkz?tab=how...

It appears they are already doing exactly this.

If you add a few more “easy” to it it may hide you have no idea what it takes logistically or have ever built something of similar scope / complexity.

But did they lie to congress… it’s not about prioritising their own brands because yes everyone does it, it’s about lying to Congress.

Sure, I don’t disagree about this part of the charge: I just don’t think there’s much difference between any other commerce-oriented business and Amazon on the question of prioritizing store brands.

Customers can actually see all the products at a physical store shelf to make comparisons albeit they may be placed at different heights on the shelves. Amazon essentially hides other competitors on the screen since they get the “buy box” and competition can only be seen by clicking to another screen; vast majority of users do not click to other screens.

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