Is E-Consolidation Dangerous?

from the too-much-power-in-too-few-hands dept

An Ecommerce Times article wondering if all this "e-consolidation" isn't healthy. Already this past holiday season 22% of all sales went to eBay or Amazon. Smaller retailers like OurHouse and Egghead were folded into Amazon this quarter, and even larger retailers like Toys R Us are basically on Amazon now. The article, however, never really explains why this might be dangerous. In fact, it points out that customers tend to like both eBay and Amazon for the most part - and if they stopped liking them, I imagine that would be an opening for new companies to step in. This seems to be someone looking at a statistic and creating a problem for it.
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  • identicon
    Brandon, 31 Jan 2002 @ 12:32pm

    what about brick and mortar?

    Do people not see the same problem there? Probably not, because there appear to be a large number of stores... but how many of those stores are owned by larger conglomerates like GAP, or Hudson, etc? Not to mention Walmart and Target... what percentage of retail clothes, for instance, flows through those? What percentage of books does Barnes & Noble handle?

    Brandon

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Other Ryan, 31 Jan 2002 @ 4:46pm

      Re: what about brick and mortar?

      Exactly. I don't see that e-consolidation is any more or less healthy than regular consolidation, or in fact any different. At the end of the day, it all means consumers have less choice, and that's never good for the consumers.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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