reality by throwing cash at it courtesy of the markets, which reward
Amazon and punish the rest of retail, as they gaze adoringly at the best
storyteller of our age, sans maybe Steven Spielberg—Jeff Bezos.
To be fair, Bezos is delivering on his vision to dominate global
retail—and then to own the infrastructure that most consumer
businesses will pay a toll to access. European retail growth in 2017 will
be 1.6 percent. In 2018, it will be 1.2 percent.^94 Amazon is the top
online retailer in Europe, with sales of 21 billion euro in 2015, which
beats the next bestsellers, Otto Group and Tesco, by three and five
times, respectively.^95
But the real disruption will occur when Amazon opens stores
throughout the rest of the world, as it’s planning to in India. People
may love Amazon’s selections, prices, and the convenience of buying
online, but the number-one influencer on consumer decisions is still
the store. People love to go into stores and feel things—real, traditional
gatherer. This is especially true in grocery, where the instinct first
developed. The grocery sector, ripe, certainly, to be disrupted, will see
Amazon apply its tech expertise to store logistics, checkout, and
delivery, setting new standards in the sector. Whole Foods had been
criticized, and its stock price had fallen pre-acquisition because of its
high prices. Amazon will have just the cure for that. Meanwhile the
460 Whole Foods stores become Amazon’s supply chain—a delivery
hub for Amazon Fresh and a transit hub for its other operations.
Whole Foods stores could also become locations for returning online
orders of any kind, drastically cutting costs. Amazon wants to be
within an hour of as many people as possible, and Whole Foods is a
recipe for that.
Imagine if, in the United States, Amazon bought the post office or
a gasoline station company. People are used to bombing in and out of
these venues to pick up stuff. It’s currently building just such “click
and collect” stores in Sunnyvale and San Carlos, both in Silicon
Valley.^96 That will send a message.
Amazon now offers everything you need, before you need it,
delivered in an hour to the 500 million wealthiest households on the
planet. Every consumer firm can pay a toll to access an infrastructure
less expensive to rent from Amazon than to build itself. Nobody has
the scale, trust, cheap capital, or robots to compete. This is all