And the problem is that Amazon's growth profile (retail-side anyway) is going to be pretty constrained going forwards because they own too much of the available pie right now. So the result is that managers are going to have to look for other ways to trim costs to make numbers.
If you're starting from 0.001% of the retail market and trying to grow 10x it is much easier to do that just by having really good customer service.
There are companies that have been around for 300 years, in fact prior to rise of venture capital moat companies were multi-generational family business and you would consider how a decision would reflect on your children.
Why do you believe this? Not one of the top 10 online retailers in the US doesn’t have third party sellers. It appears to be the case in practice that growing does require opening the doors to anyone and everyone, which obviously increases the scale of business a retailer can offer. There are both reasons and evidence to suggest third party sales are what it takes to grow to even one hundredth the size of Amazon.
> seeing what is happening to Amazon’s reputation, that seems like a bad long term move.
This seems like a big assumption. There is a very long list of corporations and monopolies with relatively bad reputations that are doing just fine and have for a long time. Reputation isn’t a good measure for the success or future prospects of a company, once it gets large enough.
Short termisum might win out, but it is not a foregone conclusion.