Reengineering Retail

You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.” JACK MA

And in more good news for brands, India not only happens to be the world’s fastest-growing economy, it also offers phenomenally good demographics, housing the world’s largest population of millennials. In fact, the median age in India is an astonishing twenty-seven years old, compared to thirty-eight in the United States, forty-one in the United Kingdom and forty-two in Canada.10 So I ask you, if you’re Nike, where would you rather sell running shoes?

In 2016, India surpassed the U.S. as the second-most Internet-connected global market, and with Internet usage growing at approximately 40 percent per year,

In fact, from a competitive standpoint, retailers would be wiser to think of Amazon not as a retailer at all but as a data, technology and innovation company that also happens to sell things.

a brilliant presentation (which you should definitely watch on YouTube), Ritson dissects the social media marketing numbers that,

thinks in platforms and networks. What I mean is that all of its innovations are built with surplus potential, allowing Amazon to serve businesses outside its walled garden.

Like a black widow spider, Amazon has been spinning a web of innovation, creating a very sticky and effective consumer value ecosystem. For example, by creating great original entertainment content as bait, Amazon brings more people into Prime and thus more sales into its ecommerce business. As Bezos once said, “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes. And it does that in a very direct way.”

Thus, Amazon Prime is not a loyalty program so much as it is a distinct product and service ecosystem underpinned with an elevated customer experience.

Its capacity to run so many parallel experiments across its business is unprecedented. Moreover, its high threshold for failure within the innovation process is unusual and something the company wears like a badge of honor. “Amazon,” Bezos has said, “is the best place to fail.” Failure is something Bezos and his team appear more than willing to risk, if it means putting his competitors out of business.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” STEVE JOBS