I kinda agree, but I also think that Alibaba is sitting out there and capable of setting up shop in the US, and challenging Amazon. They could invent some kind of Amazon-Prime-like gimmick and just charge you $1 a year, and if they could deliver similar quality....they’d put Amazon out of business. (note: the same quality might be the question mark here).
I live in Europe, and find that in 75-percent of the cases....Amazon can beat local pricing. Toner cartridges are a good example. Last week, I ended up buying a Samsung 8 smartphone via Amazon. Typically, at the store, it would run near 550 Euro. Via normal Amazon, it would have been in the 480 Euro range. So I woke up early one morning...5 AM...logged on, and just accidentally looked up the pricing...two-hour unannounced sale in progress for the Samsung 8 (4 AM to 6 AM). They dropped the price to 301 Euro. But 99-percent of people aren’t going to log on at 5 AM to find deals like this.
I go on line for my lower prices, never the stores. If I see a product on amazon, I either find the seller at other locations on the web or I find the product at a less than or similar price via other sellers on web.
Alibaba could just clean Bezos’ clock.
Alibaba is more like Ebay than Amazon, and all of the vendors are in China.