Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Pretty much. The Anything-but-Amazon crowd focuses on their discounted sale prices but conveniently forgets the books that *don't* get discounted.
Amazon's business is built off basket pricing: just like supermarkets, they advertise sale items to draw traffic and try to "co-sell" other lower-discount items so they make a net profit on the whole basket of products sold.
Theoretically, if *everybody* only bought sale items *ever*, Amazon would be bled dry by the practice and would have to raise prices. But since in the real world consumers *don't* behave that way, basket pricing delivers net profits to Amazon. 17-plus years of evidence proves it does.
It seems some people are simply incapable or unwilling to accept that even if Amazon always sells *some* books at a loss doesn't mean they *always* sell *all* books at a loss.
Sophisticated 20th century marketting practices are hard to grasp, I know.  |
I'm afraid your analysis is faulty. Amazon's strategy is to sell ebooks AS A WHOLE at loss, in order to draw customers so that they can sell NON-BOOK items at a profit. Now, as the suit progresses, it may come out that Amazon makes money on ebooks over all. But most business analysts think Amazon is losing money on ebooks over all. Since Amazon doesn't realease sales figures, we don't know for sure, but that's the way to bet.