BRotD - Entry 0229 Amazon's Challenge

Best Reading of the Day

Your best read today comes from the folks over at Re/Code.  The story covers Amazon's difficulties getting customers to find new products, or products they didn't know they wanted/needed.  This is the phenomenon long relied upon by traditional brick & mortar stores.  Walk in looking for one thing and walk out with several more things.

Here is the story:

http://recode.net/2015/08/10/amazons-next-big-challenge-getting-you-to-buy-stuff-you-didnt-know-you-wanted/

Here is a snippet from the piece:

Amazon’s pitch to these startups, which sell their goods to Amazon at wholesale prices, is that the e-commerce giant can get their products discovered by way more people than through other sales channels. But some of these categories of goods may pose problems for Amazon because they fall out of Amazon’s sweet spot. Amazon is an amazing place to shop when you know the exact brand, or at least type of product, you want to buy. It is, at its core, a search engine — one that’s fast, precise and increasingly a big competitive risk to Google’s own product search business.

But it is still a long way off from being a top source of inspiration for shoppers to discover completely new goods they had no intention of buying.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant