Word: isn
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...venture captures these new infonomics better than eBay, the four-year-old auction site. The eBay miracle isn't that it allows you to clean out your attic at a profit--though that's not a bad invention--but that it changes the whole way that we set prices. On eBay, buyers get to decide what something is worth, so objects migrate closer to their true value. Recently a Maine antiques store put an old-fashioned calculator up for sale on eBay for $100. Within a few days the calculator-loving collectors of the Web had bid the price...
This is ground zero of the New Economy? At age five, Earth's Biggest Bookstore is now Earth's Biggest Selection, in keeping with Bezos' plan for world domination. Meaning what, exactly? Well, in a sense, Amazon isn't about technology or even commerce. Any moron can open an online store. The trick is showing millions of customers such a good time that they come back every few days for the next 50 years. Amazon is, like every other site on the Web, a content play...
Global auctions are the kind of ideal market Adam Smith could only have dreamed of. Sellers are, at least in theory, guaranteed a price that isn't too low: they get to sell to the highest bidder anywhere in the world. And buyers are assured the price isn't too high because they get to choose the lowest one being offered by any seller in the world. Location becomes unimportant. You're not penalized for being a seller stuck in low-traffic, low-price Bismarck or a buyer shopping in high-cost Manhattan. Auctions also minimize transaction costs ("friction...
...changes move Wal-Mart closer to the "clicks-and-mortar" approach to e-tailing. But Balter isn't expecting a watershed event. The company will improve its online operations, he says, "at a pace it feels it needs to go at to win--and it usually wins." Wal-Mart's loyal demographic--mainstream folks, not tech geeks--will be sidling up to spanking-new, sub-$500 PCs from Santa just as the new-and-improved wal-mart.com is making its debut. So Wal-Mart just might be their ride to the party...
...commerce chain. To fill the gap, Wal-Mart has contracted Books-A-Million and Fingerhut to pick, pack and ship online orders--most likely a short-term solution. The company will also have to grasp how online shoppers shop. Choosing products to splash on its home page isn't like stocking razor blades by the check-out. "This is where it's behind the learning curve," Cooperstein says, "but it will learn." And before long, it may be time to dig into that souffle. Priced at a discount, of course...