Quote:
Originally Posted by hwlester
Yes, Amazon picked up Woot a while back (two years ago?).
|
Going on three.
Interestingly enough, their rationale was similar to the Goodreads buy, reaching out to people who *weren't* well-served by teir existing webstore.
Here's CBS' take at the time:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_1...-surprise-you/
Quote:
The NYT hypothesized that Amazon's interest in Woot is based in its pursuit of those very same impulse buyers. Its coverage of the acquisition says:
Although Amazon has long offered its own daily deals, Woot attracts impulse shoppers that Amazon has not been able to capture, said Sucharita Mulpuru, a principal analyst covering e-commerce at Forrester Research. "Amazon is a destination that is all about focused buying; you go there when you're looking for something very specific," she said. "Woot is about persuading you to buy something you didn't even know you needed."
But ReadWriteWeb has a more instructive take from marketing guru Michael Vorel, who argues that the acquisition will serve two purposes. Firstly, he says, the items sold on Woot have such thin margins that the real value must be in something else: namely, the behavioral information Amazon can gather from such "real-time" buying (real-time, he says, in the sense that TV shopping is real-time). Secondly, Woot gets about 10% of its referral traffic from Facebook, which means that those real-time purchases are tied closely to buyers' social graphs.
But Vorel doesn't go far enough in his appraisal. Yes, the real-time connection is important -- it allows Amazon to test incentives -- and yes, Facebook's contribution is important. But both those points neglect the real concept that will superintend both real-time buying and Facebook in the next five years: mobility.
Woot is a dead-simple concept that is ripe for social activity, which is why Facebook is already the source of so many referrals. (If you see a cool item on Woot that seems right for a friend, you may be likely to share it promptly because the deals expire so quickly.) But dead-simple sales concepts are also ideal for smartphones, which are less adept at at granular searching and long-tail shopping.
|
As I said, Amazon finds value is the oddest of ways.