Through the Seattle Times, here is a clip on the history of Amazon Prime. Below, I discuss two points on scaling Prime services. Two Points on Scaling: Scaling Volume: Prime was clearly a way to scale revenues through the volume of transactions, even at a huge setup cost, by introducing a subscription plan. An issue with scaling revenues this way is the stickiness of prices. It took a whole nine years for Amazon to go from $79 to a more profitable fee of $99. (I thought they would be raised to $108 at $9 a month – closer to NetFlix rates – but the fees were stickier than I had thought). Scaling Speed: It is much harder to scale on…
Leave a CommentMonth: November 2017
(Photo credit: Alamy, The Economist). The Economist (subscription) has a review of an upcoming biography of Joseph Conrad by Maya Jasanoff (The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World. Penguin Press). The magazine calls Conrad the “First Novelist of Globalization”, which I think is quite accurate. Conrad, born in Ukraine, ran away to sea-faring at 16, landed in the UK at 21. He wrote about regions unfamiliar at the birth of globalization – South East Asia (in Lord Jim) and Belgian Congo (Into the Heart of Darkness, which inspired Apocalypse Now) – lands that stretched in the unknowns (compared to British Raj in India). Think of all the people writing about what AI means to the world, now. Conrad is…
Leave a CommentHere is the previous post on Amazon Key, which begins services on Nov 8 in about 37 cities. Many are skeptical about the usefulness or the need for the service. For instance, here is “I’m not ready for Amazon Key” on CNBC, and a dramatic narration (“I’d rather have porch pirates steal my sponges than let Amazon in my house“) of the trust-in-service path point that I made in my previous post on Amazon Key. Here is a Statista chart capturing the results of a poll: “How comfortable do you feel about guest access via smart locks?” (source: in the chart). Here is another chart through Morning Consult that gives some additional information on reception to the idea based on…
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