Amazon Prime is a remarkable success but also dystopian. It has made convenience and speed the norm, habituating consumers to buy more products. Prime’s flywheel effect - where more customers lead to more data and scale which attracts more customers - has fueled Amazon’s dominance. Prime subscribers spend twice as much and Amazon’s value has multiplied 97 times since 2005. While canceling Prime may not hurt Amazon, it can benefit local businesses by gaining a new customer. However, Prime has rewired how people think about what is possible to obtain and how fast, making a Prime-free life unimaginable for many.

  • @snowbell@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    For real, the amount of people acting like the choices here are Amazon Prime or driving over to the B&M is ridiculous. It is like people forgot how to shop online. There are many other choices for online shopping. It is so incredibly lazy to just throw your hands up and say “Whelp, the local store doesn’t have what I need, guess I need to use Amazon Prime.”