Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
by SaintGhurka on Friday June 16, 2017 @05:55PM
(#14572933)
> Efficiency and cheapness would go against the Whole Foods brand.
For their existing customers, yes, but WF has become an aspirational brand.
What if the play is to gain a large number of less affluent customers by WF-labeling lots of inexpensive things?
Search Amazon for some commodity like corn meal, or rolled oats. There's a huge price difference between Quaker brand and Bob's Red Mill. Amazon could insert Whole Foods brand right in the middle and skim customers from both ends while maintaining handsome margins.
Only if you erode their core customer values and degrade the products. I find it easy to imagine a more streamlined business with more affordable prices in Whole Foods. Why not?
Re:Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
by puranjay on Saturday June 17, 2017 @10:39AM
(#14576073)
What if you increase efficiency and cheapness in non visible areas that customers don't get to see?
> Efficiency and cheapness would go against the Whole Foods brand.
I don't know what this means. The WF experience has nothing to do with these things. The price (cheap or less-than-expensive) and efficiency (I think you mean availability?) aren't really important, other than they are successful in the same way Trader Joes is successful, in fewer locations.
> What if this is about taking the Whole Foods concept online in a big way ... make it dramatically more efficient, aggressively lower prices, and deliver all this goodness to a far larger percentage of the population?
Efficiency and cheapness would go against the Whole Foods brand.