Winner Sells All
Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets
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- USD 15.99
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- USD 15.99
Publisher Description
A riveting investigation of the no-holds-barred battle between Amazon and Walmart to become the king of commerce.
For years, Walmart and Amazon operated in separate spheres—one a massive brick-and-mortar retailer, the other an online giant. But in 2016, Walmart aggressively moved into the world of e-commerce, while Amazon made big bets in physical retail.
The resulting rivalry is a bare-knuckle power struggle as each titan tries to outmaneuver the other to become the biggest omnichannel retailer in the world. As the two megacorporations have consolidated power, troubling consequences have also emerged—for consumers and small merchants faced with fewer buying and selling options, and for millions of workers paid meager wages for demanding and sometimes dangerous work.
Winner Sells All is a tale of disruption and big money moves, with legendary executives and fearless entrepreneurs in a battle—between rival corporations and sometimes even within the same company—to invent the future and cement their own legacies. Veteran journalist Jason Del Rey chronicles the defining business clash of this generation—a war waged for our loyalty and our wallets, with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake and millions of jobs on the line. As both companies continue to expand their empires into new industries, Winner Sells All reveals how this battle will change the ways we shop, live, and work—for decades to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Del Rey debuts with an impressive account of the rivalry between Amazon and Walmart, digging into the decisions that enabled Amazon to give the "big bad bully of retail" a run for its money. Drawing on interviews "with current and former executives, employees, and industry insiders," Del Rey chronicles how Amazon's tech savvy and rapid growth led it to become "Walmart 2.0, for better and worse." Amazon, he notes, started as an online book retailer in 1995 and began selling other products in 1998, after it poached top executives from Walmart. Del Rey describes Walmart as slow to respond and stuck in the past, with CEO David Glass predicting in the late '90s that "Walmart's online store would never register more sales than the largest single Sam's Club brick-and-mortar location." The author illuminates the legal loopholes that gave Amazon an early advantage (it didn't have to pay sales tax in states where the company had no physical presence), as well as how the bickering between Walmart's store and e-commerce executives hampered the retailer's growth in the online market. Del Rey's behind-the-scenes insights enlighten, and the author makes no bones about what the companies' success has cost workers, criticizing both for keeping wages low while lavishly rewarding executives. This thorough outing delivers.
