Will Amazon’s Retail Business Lose Its Momentum?
One of the big things to watch in the next few years is this:
Will Amazon retail slowly lose its edge?
It’s not as profitable as other things Amazon does - advertising and AWS hold that crown.
It's not growing as fast as other avenues - see above.
It's not a place of continued resource and people investment. It's very very common to see people who used to be in Retail or Marketplace now in other areas like Alexa, Video, Advertising, Supply Chain, etc.
It's commonly known that these days, the site is essentially "run by robots." Yes, there are category teams, but the number is much smaller than it used to be.
What does this mean for innovation? Quality? What does it mean that the new leadership (Jassy) is coming from AWS? Most casual Amazon consumers mostly think of “the everything store” and may not realize that retail is barely 50% of Amazon’s business.
What does this mean for competition trying to knock it down? Probably not much soon, the flywheel still keeps spinning.
I recently wrote more about the future of Amazon retail in my newsletter. Not to toot my own horn (beep beep), but there are some useful insights in there about some of the areas where The Great And Powerful Amazon might not be at the peak of their game. Some highlights (lowlights?): the paradox of choice, focusing less on physical goods and more on software/data, and maybe even a chart.
Jeff Bezos said that as a business matures, you need to make riskier bets to avoid creeping incrementalism. Well, in core retail (not supply chain) that is just not happening. Creep, creep.
