Just when we thought we understood Amazon, it surprises us. We are used to observing an online retailer that cuts prices relentlessly to undermine brick and mortar stores. It has now decided to buy Whole Foods Market, a premium chain for Americans who can afford fancy cheese and fish.
就在我们自以为了解亚马逊(Amazon)的时候，它让我们吃了一惊。我们习惯于看到一家电商通过大幅降价抢走实体店铺的生意。它现在决定收购全食超市(Whole Foods Market)，后者是一家美国高档超市连锁店，面向的是买得起高级奶酪和鱼的顾客。
If it wanted to turn physical, the Amazon of our imagination might have followed Aldi, the private German retailer, by investing $5bn to expand its US discount stores, or have directly taken on Walmart’s 3,500 grocery and hardware Supercentres. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, is instead entering the top end of the grocery market by offering $13.7bn for Whole Foods.按照我们的想象，如果亚马逊想进军实体店，它可能效仿投资50亿美元拓展其美国折扣商店的德国非上市零售商阿尔迪(Aldi)，或者直接挑战沃尔玛(Walmart)的3500家售卖食品杂货和五金产品的超级购物中心(Supercentre)。但实际上，亚马逊创始人杰夫?贝索斯(Jeff Bezos)将通过以137亿美元收购全食超市，进入高端食品杂货市场。This suggests either that Mr Bezos has lost his bearings or that many people think about Amazon in the wrong way. In fact, it is not so much an online discounter as a vast convenience store. Making things easier, either by cutting prices or by delivering goods simply, is his master plan.这要么表明贝索斯迷失了方向，要么表明许多人对亚马逊的看法出了错。实际上，与其说亚马逊是一家折扣电商，还不如说它是一家庞大的便利店。贝索斯的总体规划是通过降价或者将商品简单地送达，来让人们的生活容易一点。The Whole Foods deal brings to mind not Walmart, Aldi, or Kroger, the largest traditional US supermarket, but a company that predated them: the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. A & P was a precursor of US supermarkets and the way that it combined efficient technology with high street grocery outlets provides clues to Mr Bezos’s thinking.收购全食超市的交易让人想起的不是沃尔玛、阿尔迪或者美国最大的传统超市克罗格(Kroger)，而是一家历史远比它们悠久的公司：大西洋和太平洋茶叶公司(Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company，简称A&P)。A&P是美国超市的前身，它将高效科技与商业街食品杂货店结合起来的方式，为理解贝索斯的想法提供了线索。Before A & P, Americans shopped at small-town stores that were “often run in a haphazard manner” and purchased their supplies from “a byzantine collection of jobbers and middle men that was rife with corruption”, according to Paul Ellickson, an economics professor at Rochester university.罗彻斯特大学(University of Rochester)经济学教授保罗?埃利克森(Paul Ellickson)表示，在A&P诞生之前，美国人在小城商店购物，这些商店“往往经营散漫”，进货渠道“由各种批发商和中间商组成，错综复杂、充满腐败”。Like an early 20th-century Amazon, A & P cut through all of that. In 1913, it opened “economy stores” on high streets, supplying them through its own network of warehouses and delivery trucks. It offered its own private label brands, which were fresher and less likely to be out of stock. A & P expanded to 16,000 stores in 1930 as economies of scale allowed it to undercut independents.与如今的亚马逊一样，A&P在20世纪初颠覆了这一切。在1913年，它在各条商业街上开了“经济店”，通过自己的仓库网络和送货车供货。它提供自有品牌的商品，这些商品更加新鲜，而且不那么可能断货。A&P在1930年扩张到1.6万家门店——规模经济让它得以用低价打败非连锁商店。It eventually became a victim of its own success. Smaller operators lobbied for it to be curtailed and price discrimination was banned by the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act to stamp out discounting. It went into decline, replaced by large supermarkets built by Kroger and Safeway in warehouse districts and away from high streets.它最终受自身成功所累。中小型商店展开游说、要求限制A&P，1936年出台的《鲁宾逊-帕特曼法》(Robinson-Patman Act)禁止价格歧视以打压打折。A&P逐渐走向衰落，被克罗格(Kroger)和Safeway在仓库区建造的、远离商业街的大型超市取代。But the combination of Amazon and Whole Foods suggests that history is starting to repeat itself. The supermarket itself has reached an apotheosis in huge suburban stores run by Walmart, as well as Carrefour and Tesco in Europe, and many shoppers are looking for alternatives. Amazon’s Whole Foods deal is an experiment rather than the solution, but it is intriguing.但亚马逊和全食的联手表明，历史开始重演。超市本身的发展已经到了顶，沃尔玛经营的大型郊区门店、欧洲的家乐福(Carrefour)和乐购(Tesco)就代表着它的巅峰；许多顾客正在寻找替代选择。亚马逊收购全食是一场试验而非解决方案，但这笔交易饶有趣味。The supermarket’s strength is becoming its vulnerability in an age when technology is changing the rules of retailing. It reduces costs and prices by grouping together many kinds of goods in one place, from tins of beans to fresh fish and meat, and persuading shoppers to bear the cost of final delivery. They drive to stores to load their trolleys and purchase everything at once.在一个技术正在改变零售规则的时代，超市的优势正在变成其劣势。超市凭借两点降低了成本和价格，一是将从豆子罐头到鲜鱼鲜肉等许多种商品集中在同一个地方，二是说服顾客承担了终端派送成本。他们驱车前往商店，装满购物车，一次买下所有东西。Technology now offers a way to unbundle the traditional supermarket — to sell different things in different ways. Instead of having to shop for bulk household items, dried pasta and rice, and fresh fish all at once, the shopper’s leisure time can be allocated more enjoyably and effectively. Routine goods can be ordered online and delivered directly, leaving time to pick the choicest produce in person.现在技术让我们有办法“拆散”传统超市——以不同方式销售不同的东西。顾客可以更愉快且有效地配置闲暇时间，而不必一次买齐大量家居用品、意大利面、大米以及鲜鱼。常购商品可以网上下单、直接派送到家，把时间留给亲自挑选最优质的产品。It is more complex than that, of course. For one thing, people’s shopping habits and sense of convenience vary according to where they live. Online grocery providers such as Ocado in the UK and FreshDirect in the US do best in cities, where people want to avoid traffic jams on the way to the supermarket. In the suburbs, it is often easier to drive to a Walmart or Kroger store.当然，实际情况会复杂一些。一方面，人们的购物习惯和便利感因居住地不同而有所不同。英国Ocado和美国FreshDirect等食品杂货电商在城市里生意最好，因为人们害怕驱车去超市会遭遇堵车。在郊区，驱车前往沃尔玛或者克罗格门店往往更容易些。Shopping habits also depend on income. Whole Foods and chains such as Trader Joe’s draw people who can afford fresh and organic produce and can pay higher prices. They are also likely to be busy professionals who might buy the same food online if they were offered freshness and variety.购物习惯还取决于收入。全食和乔氏商店(Trader Joe's)等连锁店吸引的是这样的顾客：买得起新鲜有机食品并能支付较高价格的人。他们也可能是忙碌的专业人士——如果食品新鲜而且品种也多，这些人也可能在网上买。The challenge for online grocers is that freshness and variety are hard to combine — if they sell one type of tomato, their stock will turn over fast and be very fresh. If they offer 20 types, the choice is wider but the tomatoes will sit in warehouses longer. The supply chain for groceries is trickier and costlier than for non-perishables.
食品杂货电商的挑战在于，很难兼顾新鲜度和多样性——如果它们只销售一种西红柿，那库存周转将非常快，东西将非常新鲜。如果它们销售20个品种的西红柿，顾客的选择余地更大了，但西红柿呆在仓库里的时间就会更长。生鲜食品的供应链比非易腐品的供应链更棘手，成本也更高。Having experimented with Amazon Fresh, its online grocery service, in cities in the US and elsewhere, Amazon has clearly realised that it needs a physical network as well. It has to expand in order to attain what Chris Baker, a partner of the consultancy Oliver Wyman, calls “a virtuous cycle of volume, turnover and freshness”.亚马逊已经在美国和其他地方的城市试着推出了在线食品配送服务——亚马逊生鲜(Amazon Fresh)，现在它明显已意识到，自己也需要实体网点。亚马逊必须扩张，以实现奥纬咨询(Oliver Wyman)合伙人克里斯?贝克(Chris Baker)所说的“数量、周转和新鲜度之间的良性循环”。Beyond the Whole Foods acquisition lies a tantalising vision of the 21st-century A & P, an enormous, efficient retail enterprise that deliver a wide array of fresh, cheap groceries to a network of small and large outlets, as well as directly to homes. That would be the ultimate convenience store and I imagine that Mr Bezos knows it.目光越过收购全食的交易，可以看到如下诱人的前景：一个21世纪的A&P——庞大而高效的零售企业，将各种新鲜的廉价食品杂货送到规模不等的实体网点，或直接送到消费者家中。这将是终极的便利店，我想贝索斯知道这一点。