I think the only realistic way for a small player to beat Amazon at selling physical goods is to charge more and convince customers that it's worth it.
Obviously not much. The point I was trying to make was that a small player probably can't compete with Amazon on price, but they may be able to compete some other way.
Is it even a problem if they can't compete with Amazon on price? Generally the reason to fear monopolies is abuse of market capture for profit. If you own all the corn, you can set the price. But Amazon doesn't own all the commerce - it just undercuts everyone. But that is a win for consumers until Amazon tries to exploit its position.
But the moment they do that, right there is where you can undercut Amazon. If they are abusing their competitive advantage by the nature of abusing it they are giving it up.
At worse, they raise prices circumstantially to maximize profit, but that is more the benefits of winning the market than of exploiting a monopoly, because they would still be overall cheaper than any competitor could manage.
As long as Amazon is cheaper (and not exploiting employees) than what a competitor could do, the consumer is winning.
As you've described it, the consumer's "win" is determined by Amazon's competitors. Every private advantage Amazon has serves to undercut the profits a competitor would need to develop their own productivity gains. Those are the gains that would actually show up for consumers. How are they winning?
It's a growing problem with Amazon that for whatever reason isn't being addressed.
Issues like this are probably due to Amazon's size and culture, which competitors could take advantage of.
Anther example of Amazon doing an unexpectedly poor job was when my brand new seller account was rejected/disabled by mistake, it took significant effort to get any human to look at my case.
Yeah no, if you go into a normal brick and mortar store you can be pretty sure that what you're getting is not counterfeit. Stores are still not competitive with Amazon.
Anecdotally, it's enough to nudge me into alternatives. Other people are saying they know people who decline Walmart shopping for similar reasons but on the other hand with about half of US households using Amazon Prime it's a drop in the bucket.
