Australian media has erupted in a flurry of articles warning of the dire consequences of the imminent arrival of the fourth and final horseman of the apocalypse to hit our shores – Amazon.
It feels a little bit like when Jeff Goldblum hears the T-Rex coming in the original Jurassic Park.
It was US marketing professor Scott Galloway who called them one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in January 2015 in a conference presentation which subsequently went viral.
Now Galloway is saying Amazon is going to kill brands outright. Speaking at an ‘Amazon Clinic’ his research company L2 put on earlier this week in New York, the outspoken professor said among Amazon’s tactics was a deliberate strategy to avoid making a profit.
“Amazon has essentially changed the relationship between companies and shareholders. Amazon has replaced profits with vision and growth. This has changed the entire ecosystem because investors are no longer satisfied with a company that is not growing, but profitable. Or growing slowly and profitable . . .
“My strong belief is every time Amazon reports a quarter that’s quite profitable, Jeff Bezos calls his senior management team into his office and says: You screwed up! We need to green light massively expensive things that might give us an advantage over the long run. They’ve figured out that they don’t need to run the company for profits and once it becomes profitable it’s like getting an addict hooked on heroin and there’s no taking it away.
“So they never let the company get very profitable. Why? Because they don’t need to. Investors don’t demand it of them and so long as they can take all of that money and plough it back into the company, then what’s the point of being profitable?
“As a result, Amazon plays by a different game,” he said.
Check out the full presentation here, then join in the terror!
