Money Talks: Why Amazon should be afraid of Temu

Money Talks: Why Amazon should be afraid of Temu

From Money Talks from The Economist by The Economist

March 21, 2024 · 44 min

About this episode

The episode discusses how Temu aims to disrupt Amazon's dominance in the e-commerce market by offering cheaper products directly from China.

Amazon started with a plan to disrupt bookselling. It sold cheap books online, delivering them straight to customers’ homes. Three decades later it employs a million people in America and owns one hundred warehouses, each stocked with millions of products. More than a third of the US e-commerce market flows through it. Now, another company has spied an opportunity to disrupt Amazon: Temu. The Chinese e-commerce giant wants to undercut its US rival, delivering impossibly cheap stuff to Americans straight from factories in China. How worried should Amazon be? Hosts: Alice Fulwood, Mike Bird, Tom Lee-Devlin. Guests: Wendy Woloson of Rutgers University-Camden; Mark Shmulik of Bernstein; Michael Morton, an e-commerce analyst at MoffettNathanson; and Josh Silverman, CEO of Etsy. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology— Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+ For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Hosts: Alice Fulwood, Mike Bird, Tom Lee-Devlin

Guests: Wendy Woloson, Mark Shmulik, Michael Morton, Josh Silverman

Topics covered

  • e-commerce
  • business competition
  • Amazon
  • Temu
  • market disruption
  • China
  • retail

Keywords

  • Amazon
  • Temu
  • e-commerce
  • market disruption
  • retail
  • China
  • business competition

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Amazon, Temu, Rutgers University-Camden, Bernstein, MoffettNathanson, Etsy

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