Amazon PrimePantry and a Reflection

I heard a couple of guys talking the other day about how the big box stores are dying one by one. Somewhere in the discussion they indicated that they thought this would be a wonderful thing and that small local stores would replace them. That’s not the direction things are going. Yes, there are many people who would like to shop, but it doesn’t take that many who prefer to order on Amazon.com or some other supplier. Walmart is trying to compete by offering more delivery and in-store pickup for rarer items.

It’s not that nobody is going to want to shop. The question will be who can afford to pay the expenses of a physical store when less people are doing the shopping. I run into this discussion in connection with ebooks. People tell me they really like the feel  of a physical book. So do I, to be honest. The problem is not that there will be nobody who wants a physical book. Rather, the problem is that the production costs become too high when they’re not divided across a large enough audience. So things you want go away.

Every time you and I make a convenience decision—I want this delivered; I want it via an app—you change the economic formula involved in providing other varieties of service. This is how things change.

Fortunately, I think, in the book industry print-on-demand technology is also becoming better, which I think will make it possible for physical book lovers to have nifty physical books in their hands, despite reduced demand. But remember, demand doesn’t have to collapse to reduce the number of suppliers. A small cut in demand can send marginal providers into a spin from which they don’t recover.

So here’s my contribution to the spin. Check out Amazon PrimePantry, allowing you to get your groceries delivered to your door from afar.

Civilization won’t survive people like me. Whatever happened to those good, old, reliable stone axes? 🙂