Amazon Wants to Get College Students Addicted to Prime

(10/11/2016) Some people worry about the future of US Republican party or conservative. The reason is that in the last two US Presidential elections younger voters have leaned to Democrat party. In many social issues, young generations also support a more open and liberal perspective instead of conservative. The political views, once formed, is often fixed for a long time. This year, all polls show that young voters will lean towards Democrat party again. Definitely the Republican party should worry.
       Will our purchasing behavior be cultivated like our political views?
       If so, then Amazon's pursuing young shopper should make many retailers really worry about their future. Amazon has provided college students with free limited-time Amazon Prime account for years. Now they will go further to cultivate young shoppers in their shopping habits by setting up Amazon virtual store in college campus. The really scary part is: there is no real competition in the market place. Jet.com, Newegg.com, Buy.com are, or Walmart.com are even way too smaller in terms of the services and benefits from their membership. Do you think the retailers should worry about their future?

Quality Control and Customer Expectation

(10/9/2013) I posted this on my factbook today (see the picture below). I was thinking why does the retailer sell jeans so cheap on their website? Well, definitely, the quality control of the production did a very poor job. How can two jeans of the same size (even in the same style, just different wash) has 2-inch difference in waist? Poor supplier selection. Next year, the same supplier probably won't be selected. What is the impression of this online shopping for a buyer like me? I can return it but I feel it is too much work. With the price I pay, I will not waste my time doing that. This over-size jean might be a good fit one day when I really gain weight.

The problem is that I will not buy their product again from the retailer. Why did the retailer salvage these poor quality jeans on their own website? Why didn't it salvage to retailers like TJMax or Ross? If I am a consumer and I find the jeans in TJMax, I will try it on and will not notice the inconsistency of poor quality control. This retailer probably thinks discounting in its own website gets a higher salvage value then sell to TJMax in bulk. Selling on their own will also get consumer's personal information (and it will be good for marketing to customers directly in the future). However, once a consumer loses confidence in the quality, it will probably not come back. I don't think this retailer made a right decision.