I am briefly in Marrakech and the price of most things varies. There is a tourist price and there is a local price and you have to bargain hard, which takes time and adds purpose to the transaction. What is clear is that for most local people this is not a time poor society. If you can spend all day discussing the price of some oranges, because there are more sellers than buyers, then you are prepared to chance your arm with a fresh faced visitor. The quality of retailing, within these parameters, is good. Abundant service, lots of validation, lots of charm. We can learn from their energy.
“Twenty years ago I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift,” says Jeff Bezos in his most recent letter to shareholders. A blink later and he points out that the company has grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to 230,000 now. But his ambition is the same. “We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness and risk-acceptance mentality that is normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.” Amazon is great at disruption because of its customers focus and the fact that the internet means it needs none (or very few) people between its warehouses and the shopper. The threat of Prime, its membership service, is the biggest challenge facing the UK retail market and the wholesale market by extension. It is both a direct threat and an indirect threat in that is inspiring countless numbers of othe...
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