2026-0213 [Retail Brew]: Amazon’s Go and Fresh closures offer a lesson about differentiation
Retail Brew interviewed Professor Tsay about Amazon's decision to close its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh locations.
From the article:
Why does Amazon want to succeed in grocery so badly?
...Andy Tsay, professor of business and analytics at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, also noted that data is likely a driving force.
“Whoever controls the weekly food shop controls the customer relationship, which leads to data and insight about changes and preferences, which ultimately brings the ability to sell more to those customers both offline and online,” he said.
So what went wrong?
...Tsay noted the closures serve as a reminder that “physical grocery is just brutally operational,” with “thin” and “unforgiving” margins.
Tsay also noted an “initial creepiness” to Amazon Go that felt like a “science experiment.”