140505 MG.docx

1、140505 MG140505 MGE-commerceSame-day dreamersOnline firms are plunging into same-day delivery againMay 3rd 2014|SAN FRANCISCO|From the print edition When we say now, we mean nowWHEN veterans of the last dotcom boom name companies that epitomise the excesses of the late 1990s, they invariably include

2、 Webvan and K in their lists. Both promised to make it easy and cheap for people to order goods online and have them delivered swiftly. And both failed spectacularly after they discovered just how hard it is to make money trying to deliver on tight deadlines.Now, three online giants that survived th

3、e dotcom bust are trying to succeed where those two firms failed. Amazon is leading the charge. It has launched AmazonFresh, a same-day delivery service, in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. “Place your order by 10am and have it by dinner,” it boasts. The service, which offers a selection of o

4、ver 500,000 items including perishables such as milk and eggs, delivers its wares in garish green vans.In this section Return of the big deal Heavy metal A new wrinkle When it vereins, it pours NewTube A revolution in the making The glass precipice Same-day dreamers Adventures in the skin tradeRepri

5、ntsRelated topics Google Los Angeles Seattle San Francisco Online retailingGoogle and eBay are in the vanguard too. Google Shopping Express offers same-day delivery in the San Francisco Bay Area, as does eBay Now, which is also available in Chicago, Dallas and New York. The two firms are in partners

6、hip with big retail chains and smaller local shops, which hold stock that they can tap into.Delivery startups such as Instacart and Postmates are also working closely with retailers to avoid the fate of Webvan, which squandered a fortune building its own warehouses. Instacart, which focuses on groce

7、ries, relies on freelance “personal shoppers” who use their own vehicles to collect and deliver goods. An Instacart smartphone app tells them which shops to visit, what to pick up and where to take it. Working out delivery schedules and routes is “a really challenging data-science problem”, explains

8、 Apoorva Mehta, the firms boss and a former Amazon employee.Sofa-bound shoppers now have a plethora of options. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, Amazon offers a 30-day free trial of AmazonFresh, after which customers pay $299 for a years membership. Members get free shipping on orders of more than

9、$35. In Seattle, there is no annual fee, but orders worth less than $100 incur charges. Google Shopping Express, which has a much smaller selection of wares, is offering a six-month free trial while it decides what to charge; and Instacart gives customers various options, including a $3.99 fee for d

10、elivery in less than two hours and an Amazon-like $99 annual membership that eliminates fees on orders worth more than $35.Your correspondent placed orders with all three of the big online firms, and everything turned up on time and in good condition. There were only minor hitches. His Google order

11、came in two separate deliveries. And it was difficult to find details on AmazonFreshs webpage of how a dissatisfied customer could avoid incurring the $299 fee at the end of a trial period. (Amazons customer-service department replied promptly when e-mailed asking for an explanation.)Most competitor

12、s in the same-day business are focusing on cities with lots of rich consumers prepared to pay for time-saving services. But turning a profit will still not be easy. Andrew Schmahl of Strategy&, a consulting firm, says a survey of 1,000 American online shoppers it conducted last year showed most were

13、 reluctant to pay anywhere near enough to cover the cost of speedy deliveries. That may explain why other retailers have been hesitant to enter the business.Firms such as Google and Amazon may be willing to lose money on deliveries if the data they glean about peoples shopping habits let them aim th

14、eir online ads more effectively. Amazon could also use its vans to deliver packages that it currently sends through courier firms such as UPS. The e-commerce giant is certainly doing whatever it can to make swift online shopping easier. It recently unveiled the Dash, a wand-like device that lets cus

15、tomers build their online orders by scanning barcodes on empty packets or jars, or by speaking into the wands built-in microphone. The trick will be to turn such tech wizardry into magical profits.Poverty in IndonesiaMuted musicThe poor are benefiting relatively little from Indonesias growthMay 3rd

16、2014|JAKARTA|From the print edition Manufacturing would pay more“JALANAN”, a documentary by a Canadian director, Daniel Ziv, tells the stories of three buskers who play music for small change on clapped-out buses in Jakarta, Indonesias sprawling capital. One of them, Boni, lives in a sewer that runs

17、 beneath one of the citys swankiest shopping malls. The film, which recently opened in Jakarta, is a poignant reminder of the glaring gap between rich and poor in South-East Asias largest economy.Indonesia has grown rapidly in recent years and living standards have improved. On the basis of purchasi

18、ng-power parity (PPP), albeit not the updated figures discussedhere, gross national income per head doubled during the decade to 2012, to $4,730. The proportion of the population living in poverty fell by half, from 24% in 1999 to 12% in 2012. McKinsey, a consulting firm, has predicted that the coun

19、trys “consuming class” of people earning more than $3,600 annually will treble to 135m by 2030 (again, on a PPP basis and adjusted for inflation). The growing ranks of consumers, in turn, have prompted a spurt of foreign investment.In this section Tipping the scales The taxman blustereth The dragon

20、takes wing Shock therapy Muted music Rounding down Bigger than Marx Corporate sardinesReprintsRelated topics World Bank Jakarta Economic Inequality Business EconomicsYet Indonesias growth has been uneven. According to a forthcoming report by the World Bank, real consumption grew by about 4% a year o

21、n average in 2003-10. But for the poorest 40% of households it grew by only 1.3%. In contrast, consumption by the richest 20% grew by 5.9%. In other words, the rich are getting richer much more rapidly than the poor are. At 0.38 in 2011, Indonesias Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, i

22、s in line with that of other developing countries. But it has jumped from 0.29 in 2000.Over 3m migrants from the countryside arrive each year in Jakarta and other cities. Many of them end up with jobs in low-end services, hawking food by the roadside or selling things from handcarts. They are part o

23、f a vast informal economy, which accounts for some 70% of GDP. They rarely earn the official minimum wage and receive few government benefits.The World Bank estimates that labour productivity in Indonesias low-end service sector is about double that in agriculture. But it is still only one-fifth of

24、that in manufacturing. In other words, poverty falls as people leave rice fields to work in low-end services, but it would fall much faster if they were to find jobs in factories instead.Manufacturing in Indonesia is hamstrung by decrepit infrastructure, rigid labour laws and protectionist policies

25、that make it difficult for its factories to be competitive. Even though the share of Indonesias labour force employed in agriculture has been in decline for decades, manufacturings share has not changed much at all, hovering at about 13%. And local manufacturing remains dominated by the processing o

26、f palm oil and other primary commodities. In contrast, services now employ about 44% of the labour force, up from 37% a decade ago.Widening access to things like well-built houses, clean water and sanitation, along with education and health care, might slowly start to share the rewards of Indonesias

27、 rapid economic growth more evenly. Indonesia has increased its social spending. It has bold plans to introduce universal health care by 2019, for example.But government spending is still skewed towards the rich. About 20% of the central governments budget, or 282 trillion rupiah ($24.5 billion) thi

28、s year, goes on energy subsidies. Cheap petrol benefits the rich, who are the biggest consumers, more than the poor. It squeezes spending on public services, too. According to the World Bank, getting rid of fuel subsidies, while reforming taxes and cutting spending on civil servants, would allow the

29、 government to double spending on infrastructure, health and social welfare. That would be better for the environment, the economy and especially the poor.Free exchangeCorporate sardinesHow incumbent firms pack markets to deter entryMay 3rd 2014|From the print edition THE modern high street can give

30、 an overwhelming sense ofdj vu. Fans trundling to the football stadium of Tottenham Hotspur, a team from north London, pass six William Hill bookmakers on the main approach. Tourists traipsing along a half-mile stretch of 23rd Street in New York pass five Starbucks outlets. In Tokyo, 7-Eleven boasts

31、 15 stores within a similar distance of Shinjuku station. The crush of chain stores frustrates those who like one-off boutiques. Economists fret for another reason: firms may be cramming markets in order to keep rivals out.One of the first studies of the way firms compete for space was published in

32、1929 by Harold Hotelling, then of Stanford University. He showed that firms face trade-offs: locate too near a rival and ferocious competition hits profits; edge too far away and too large a chunk of the market is lost. Since the trade-off will vary by market, Hotellings theory explained why firms in some industries cluster, while others scatter.In this section Tipping the scales The taxman blustereth The dragon takes wing Shock therapy