Amazon vs Legacy Retailers

Legacy retailing continues to look for ways to compete as Amazon innovates in online retailing. Walmart, the world's largest legacy retailer, is cutting corporate jobs to get leaner. It's also reorganizing its e-commerce leadership while it integrates its acquisition of grocery retailer Jet.com.

Above, two news releases from Jet.com's "press" section, showing the acquisition just weeks after Jet celebrated its first anniversary last year. In fact, Jet.com has itself acquired an e-commerce firm known for online shoe retailing in competition with Zappos.com (which is owned by Amazon, of course).

Meanwhile, Amazon is expanding--on a large scale. It recently announced plans to hire 100,000+ employees during the next 18 months. The book industry is coming full circle with Amazon's plans to open additional Amazon bookstores. Which means that the innovator that disrupted book retailing is now joining brick-and-mortar retailing, a very different industry all these years later now that consumer behavior has evolved.