I'll have to reread, more slowly.

Until then, some quick tidbits.

One anecdote that popped out was the correlation of Walmart super centers and crappy towns. Market segmentation via geography vs demographics. "The Twinkie Index" was the first time I heard this notion. Starbucks' real estate and marketing groups had came up with a infographic, contrasting cafe locations and per capita Twinkie consumption, for when people asked "When are you going to finally put a Starbuck in [insert town here]?"

Back in the 90s, Walmart's profit sharing (employ stock grants) was a role model. Cited as one of their competitive advantages. (How things change.)

I read that what made Walmart possible (feasible) was their early, enthusiastic adoption of bar codes.

For comparison, what are (were) Amazon's critical success factors?

Lowest cost of capital. Uniquely, was able to sell growth over profits story to Wall St. Superior tax avoidance (eg sales tax holiday). Compensating employees with stocks. It's hard to imagine anyone challenging Amazon while this disparity exists.

Amazon Prime, for sure. Brand loyalty, reduced cost of customer acquisition, and all that.

I have questions:

How did Amazon figure out that programmers are a consumable resource? Cattle instead of pets. From the very beginning, my friends and I marveled at how poorly Amazon treated programmers. Surely, that can't last, right? Whelp. I was totally wrong. And I still don't know why.

Why hasn't Walmart's Jet acquisition done better? Is Walmart unable to invest in Jet sufficiently to compete? Did Walmart and Amazon accept and settle into their comparative market segments? (eg Maybe Walmart's demo doesn't buy stuff online as much.)

Why hasn't Amazon's eBay-ification, the rise of fraud and counterfeits, harmed them more? Is it because of their "customer obsession" and generous return policies? With comingling and other bullshit strategic decisions, they're promoting fraud vs mitigating it. So weird.