“This is the key to understanding the purchase of Whole Foods: to the outside it may seem that Amazon is buying a retailer. The truth, though, is that Amazon is buying a customer — the first-and-best customer that will instantly bring its grocery efforts to scale.”
Ben Thompson consistently writes some of the best business analysis on the web and this break down of Amazon’s Whole Foods acquisition is a perfect example.
He points out the real reason Amazon bought Whole Foods was to turn Whole Foods into a customer for what will become a booming grocery services business for Amazon. It’s not about the stores as much as it’s about leveraging the stores to create a larger services business which Amazon can then also sell to other stores and restaurants.
It’s a smart article about a smart company and if you read it you’ll become smarter too.