Amazon: is there any escape?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 December 2019

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s hard to escape Amazon at Christmas. Even if you haven’t been using them for last minute shopping you will most likely have interacted with the company in some other way. Amazon Web Services is now the most valuable part of the business, and whether you know it or not, you probably used it. In this episode, we speak to two people who have been tracking Amazon’s relentless growth: Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, and Alan Selby, a Sunday Mirror journalist who went under-cover and worked at Amazon’s warehouse in Tilbury. Presenter: Matthew Price Producers: Katie Gunning, Philly Beaumont Mixed by Weidong Lin Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:05.0	Hello, I'm Matthew Price.
0:08.0	Welcome to Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.
0:11.0	Every day we ask one big question about one big story.
0:15.0	Today is there any escape from Amazon?
0:25.0	Everybody.
0:27.0	Everybody need somebody
0:40.0	somebody.
0:40.0	Everybody need somebody.
0:41.0	Have you seen it?
0:42.0	They're all smiling. Each and every one of them, the kids, the
0:46.9	adults, the delivery driver, even the boxes. The boxes. The boxes. The Amazon tick on them. It's upturned, it's a cartoon smile in the Christmas ad.
0:57.0	You know, who needs to wait for Father Christmas when Amazon can get you anything within a day?
1:01.0	I bet Jeff Bezos spends a lot of time smiling.
1:05.9	We believe that long term this will be a profitable business. If it's not, if we can't turn this
1:11.7	into an important lasting company company then we will have been
1:15.2	you know a footnote in the history of e-commerce. This was him back in 99 when his
1:21.8	company was a few years old when it was just selling books online.
1:26.2	At that time I drove all the packages to the post office in my Chevy Blazer.
1:31.5	Now it can sell you pretty much anything that can be put in a box. It can sell
1:36.3	you pretty much anything that can't be put in a box. You can stream a film with them, you can
1:40.9	watch the football.
	...

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