Amazon: Coming to a Whole Foods Near You.
Whole Foods, now able to fit even the most student-sized of budgets. PC: Sally Becker
This past June, Amazon purchased Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. The news sent already ailing retailers’ stock, such as Sears, Best Buy and PayLess, falling. Amazon’s first order of business? Lower prices to a more reasonable level.
This led items such as bananas, apples, avocados and other products to go on sale permanently, as part of Whole Food’s—and ultimately Amazon’s—plan to persuade people that “whole paycheck” is a thing of the past.
“I started shopping at Trader Joe's this year, since it was cheaper than shopping at Whole Foods,” says Noah Ford, a junior studying biomedical science. “I’d definitely consider shopping [ at Whole Foods] again, if the prices are cheaper than before”
Fortunately for Amazon, their discounted prices play nicely into their plan to dominate the world of retail. Amazon, through its CEO Jeff Bezos, has adopted a “day one” approach to everything, meaning they consistently think of the company as though it’s a startup.
This means that every action taken must be bold and innovative, lest they end up dead like Blockbuster or PayLess Shoesource.
In keeping with this philosophy, Amazon has accomplished impressive things over the years, such as becoming the go-to destination for online shopping. Want a lamp? Amazon has thousands. TV’s dead? Amazon can have a brand-new one delivered in a day.
How does Amazon’s grand plan affect poor college students? The discounts were merely to draw attention to the new ownership—any customers returning due to cheaper pricing is merely a bonus.
Amazon wants to move from the digital world to the real world in a huge way. With the roll-out of its first grocery store in Seattle, and book stores popping up all over the US, the company is attempting to become the one-stop shop for everything, be it food or clothing.
By buying out Whole Foods, Amazon essentially purchased a warehouse in the heart of Lincoln, and in each Whole Foods-adorned city across the US, where buyers can pick up online orders in just a few minutes, as opposed to waiting until days later. To further drive the point home, Amazon Prime members can now get even greater discounts by shopping at Whole Foods.
Is this the future of shopping, buying everything from just one or two companies? If history proves anything, it’s that people love to get more for less, even if it can come back to bite them.
Jesse Shoghi is a junior studying computing.