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September 20, 2006
Wal-Mart Bluffs Amazon (But Not Me)
Oh, those shrewd game theoreticians in Bentonville, Arkansas. Speaking at AMD's Global Vision Conference, Wal-mart's chief marketing officer bluffed that the company doesn't care about Amazon, calling it and its $10-billion in revenue "meaningless" against mighty Wal-Mart and its $300-billion in sales. Given that online account for a tiny 1% of Wal-Mart's sales, he argued that it was basically a marketing expense for the super-retailer..Clever. What better way to convince investors that a) Wal-Mart isn't interested in Amazon, and b) that Amazon is irrelevant, than for Wal-Mart to declare Amazon irrelevant and unimportant. So ... yes, I'm still predicting Wal-Mart is going to buy Amazon -- what better way to grow their online presence quickly? -- but those Wal-Mart guys are shrewder game theorists than I thought.
[Thanks John]
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Seattle and Bentonville cultures cannot possibly co-exist. Such a merger will be a disaster. Not quite on the scale of AOL and Time Warner, but probably not far.
Hi Paul,
I think you may be giving too much credit to those "shrewd game theoreticians". I personally thinks that this may simply be a case of "Smart Companies Do [or say] Dumb Things". Will see.
Cheers,
Kempton
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P.S. My most favourte CBC show where entrepreneurs get to pitch the ideas for money is going to be aired on Oct 4th. For more info, http://www.insidethedragonsden.com/