Mon dieu! Somebody is trying to be competitive in France!
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Paris City Hall has issued a severe warning to Amazon after it launched its Amazon Prime Now shopping home delivery service, which includes more than 18,000 items, including fresh and frozen foods, which for €5.95 reaches customers in an hour, or for free within two hours (in reality, this is included in the €49 annual Amazon Premium flat rate).
Mayor Anne Hidalgo cites air pollution concerns, as well as the impact of the service on shops and the Parisian economy, while also pointing out that Amazon gave only a few days warning ahead of launching the service.
The only conclusion one can draw is that Paris City Hall thinks that offering Parisians a more competitive delivery service than anything else available is a grave threat. Competition? Whoever heard of such a thing? It must be some frightful American concept! Imagine that: seducing customers with… better, faster service, at the expense of poor local shopkeepers! Outrageous!
Taking the laughable excuse of air pollution, it would seem the mayor prefers to see 10 Parisians each in their own car driving to hypermarket rather than the dreadful alternative of a single van, which in a single route can deliver 10 orders. As for protecting local shopkeepers, that’s baloney as well. The simple truth is that the French state doesn’t like Amazon; it’s not French, it has pursued aggressive tax-saving strategies in the face of threats from governments, paying in each country all the taxes generated by its activity there, and worst of all, it is shaking things up.
In short, the authorities in the French capital city would have us believe that its residents still trot down to the corner boulangerie to buy a baguette, stopping off at the boutique and then at the fromagerie to purchase a slice of camembert… how romantic compared to the idea of clicking on a website and having your groceries brought round in an hour…
The problem here is that it is simply unacceptable that Paris City Hall has taken it on itself to try to hold back e-commerce, new developments in logistics and most importantly, what people want. If the mayor of Paris really doesn’t want one-hour delivery, whatever the excuse, she’s going to have to ban Amazon, and then whoever comes up with the idea next, whether it’s Chinese or French. And if she wants to protect local shops at all cost, then she’ll have to accept that she is blocking competition, and in so doing, consolidating inefficiencies that sooner or later somebody will end up paying for. And then her coqs are really going to come home to roost.
Perhaps the answer would be to ask the people of Paris if they would like to receive their groceries in an hour or so. Or better still, rather than asking them, just monitor uptake of the service, while measuring if it worsens air pollution and if Amazon, faced with a to-the-bitter-end defense of Parisian customs, has to close the service due to its lack of popularity. Market, market, market. Everything else is just paternalism.
(En español, aquí)
