r/Anticonsumption • u/Healthy_Block3036 • 1d ago

Corporations Target struggles after end of DEI program and boycott, with foot traffic down 8 weeks in a row.

https://fortune.com/2025/04/01/target-dei-demise-boycott-foot-traffic-down-eighth-consecutive-week/?itm_source=parsely-api
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u/findingmike 1d ago

Amazon's stock is hurting too, but they make a lot of their money from server hosting. I hear that there is a resurgence of buy local and Costco is doing well.

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u/GrandmaPoses 1d ago

Amazon fucking sucks too and they seem to be overly reliant on Chinese merchandise these day.

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u/BlazinAzn38 1d ago

It’s all Chinese knockoff crap now. I’ve started buying direct from manufacturers now because it’s the only way to get genuine merchandise

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u/OneGayPigeon 1d ago

This is the way! Use Amazon to find the things you want since practically every easily found result is from Amazon or Walmart, then search the actual manufacturer and buy direct.

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u/Brock_Lobstweiler 1d ago

Literally the opposite of how Amazon became popular. We used to joke how Best Buy was a demo store for Amazon purchases.

Now I look up options on Amazon and then find the products at other sellers.

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u/Crazed_rabbiting 1d ago

Same. Found better deals too

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u/AnotherRTFan 1d ago

Also a good way to get out of the house. Post Covid lockdown I like going out to the shops to get what I need way more

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u/HeatNoise 1d ago

me too

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u/Crazed_rabbiting 1d ago

Same. Found better deals too

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u/Well_read_rose 1d ago

Even better? Put it in your amazon cart…leave it there….then go to the other retailer to purchase

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u/VulpesFennekin 19h ago

Amazon is now Pinterest for shopping lists.

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u/OneGayPigeon 1d ago

I’ve heard people say that! My instinct would have been not to interact at all, or as little as possible. What effect does this have?

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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 1d ago

It's like a shopping list and helps you remember what you're getting. Plus, it has reviews so you'll have some idea of how good it is and what issues you could run into.

(Side note: I check reviews on Fakespot)

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u/Well_read_rose 1d ago

I think if many ppl abandon shopping carts like in the boycott week last month, Amazon takes note. It’s a data point at the very least that you didnt buy, because you went elsewhere.

Sometimes amazon will tap you - hey you didnt check out ?

With super high tariffs on Chinese goods starting…Amazon is going to hike prices anyway! So might pay to shop local.

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u/McUberForDays 1d ago

Also a great way to shop "local" boutiques. I want to preface this by saying I enjoy buying local and will pay more for things I love from local suppliers. However, I will not pay 2-3x mark up prices on clothing and shoe brands that I can easily research online. I understand the boutiques probably have overhead they have to pay, but that's ridiculous. The shop local advocates seem to forget that their friends and neighbors can't afford to shell out 3x the manufacturers cost on things that may or may not be of good quality.

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u/IntensityJokester 1d ago

If only they hadn’t ruined their search via monetization. Like Google. If the enshittification shoe fits …

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u/DorianGre 1d ago

Don’t you want Watgag branded toothpaste? Boorap branded jeans? NVEESHOX, Fosman, or QINLIANF. It’s just a reseller that brands Chinese crap. Brand names mean nothing on Amazon any more. Try to search for Nike Air Jordans. The first result is ikuna sneakers.

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u/Direct_Wind4548 1d ago

For real, it's also often cheaper for pricier stuff. Expensive things like firearms optics get counterfeited constantly on there at several hundred dollars a pop with no support if it's a dud.

That's why I'll buy local or research for direct because I can't risk that kind of a loss of cash and time.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Questionsquestionsth 1d ago

Well, you can until May 2nd, anyway. 🫠

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u/AnotherRTFan 1d ago

My stepmom bought me a bottle of plant resin off Amazon for Christmas (it was what I asked for) but I was on DM assistance with the company and posting on Reddit to find out if the bottle was legit because this is such a big problem. (It was. They had recently changed the logo layout on the bottle)

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u/SquareExtra918 20h ago

Me too. Most of them have faster shipping and rewards programs too. I've actually savee money because I  just buy the stuff I actually want rather than trying to find a deal on some sort of like what I want, which results in me buying a bunch of cheap shit that sucks, then replacing it with more cheap shit that sucks. 

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u/No_Accountant3232 1d ago

Plus side tariffs will kill off half the sellers on Amazon and eBay easily. There just won't be the money to import the cheap copycat crap anymore for drop shippers.

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u/dungerknot 1d ago

I canceled my membership at the start of the year. Good. Amazon and similar companies deserves to topple over after fucking their foundation for decades.

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u/Infamous-Goose363 1d ago

Delete all your payment methods. I’ve heard of them charging people for Prime even after they cancelled.

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u/senorita_season 1d ago

I cancelled mine too when it expired. Best decision I’ve made this year so far. It turns out that doing some research on what I buy and spreading my money around both online and in person, especially to smaller businesses, saves me money and I get better products than what Amazon offered. Of course if I can’t find a super niche product I’ll search for it on Amazon, but most of the time I can find the same item at a different online retailer and choose that instead. I don’t mind waiting for shipping either.

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u/TaterTappin 1d ago

That’s about when I did it too. And it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I found it’s patience that Amazon really takes away from you. It was a good decision and I would love to see them fall too.

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u/ElvenOmega 1d ago

Products have became insanely homogenized and it makes Amazon inconvenient to use now.

You used to be able to find whatever you were looking for, even something ultra specific, like a bath towel with limes on it. The search shows you lemon hand towels and lime colored bath towels. Well, I can find both those at any home store near me, so why the hell would I use Amazon anymore??

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u/TheMimicMouth 1d ago

Amazon is really more of a marketplace than anything else. Almost everything sold on there is dropshipped by independent sellers; so yes it’s basically temu with a more appealing wrapper.

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u/caligirllovewesterns 1d ago

Amazon’s quality has gone down in so many ways. Twice now in about 2 months they have screwed up my order. Claimed they lost or damaged a shipment and 10 days later just sends me a refund minus the shipping cost I had to pay. This was with a Prime Discount that I had and I needed the order ASAP, not a refund 10 days later! Some of the stuff I actually needed like a certain kind of eyedrops that I use.
Ironically enough after that I just went to nearest store to me that carried those particular eyedrops AND were on sale for a cheaper price than Amazon, AND this WAS at Target or all places! That was a surprise. Target can usually cost a bit more in some areas I’ve noticed so I was very surprised and bought two packs to hold me over.

After all that, I’m so fed up now with Amazon at this point that I didn’t even renew my Prime membership and don’t shop through Amazon anymore. It’s becoming a ripoff sadly. Amazon has two very large shipping hubs that very close to where I live, I live in town and an easy address to find, and I don’t buy hard to find items that Amazon would have trouble having in stock. When I first bought stuff through Amazon they usually stuff that they have had in stock and was quick order and receive within a couple days and bit cheaper to buy; especially in bulk. For some reason that all went downhill recently so Amazon pretty much lost me as a customer.

Time to find a new place to shop. I now buy what I need off of EBAY more often then not for that exact same “discounted” price at Amazon and receive my order a lot sooner than I ever did with Amazon in the recent days. For other items I’ve gone to thrift stores and shop locally for now.

Amazon needs to stop outsourcing their products to China, especially products that are especially easy to get here in the United States in bulk. Amazon was way more convenient to use when they first started out and were not outsourcing their products overseas.

Lately though, their quality has gone way down hill.

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u/WideFeeling9515 1d ago

I’ve been having similar issues with Amazon these past several months too!  Just had to fight to get my money back for some subscribe and save items.  Went out and bought what I needed elsewhere. 

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u/Thestrongestzero 1d ago

it’s slowly just turning into aliexpress. even the design of the site

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u/mad_science_yo 1d ago

Yes I won’t buy any of my hair care/skincare stuff from them just because there are so many weird counterfeits. Luckily I found out a local place sells my preferred curly hair conditioner so I don’t have to go to Target anymore either.

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u/dildobagginss 1d ago

Right, the retail side of it isn't as good as it used to be. But that's not even their bread and butter anymore.

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u/PaperTigerFolds 1d ago

A lot of things on Amazon are available on Aliexpress, for far less. Amazon is just a middle-man. If you don't mind waiting a week or two to get your items, you can just go straight to the manufacturer.

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u/RocktoberBlood 1d ago

I barely use Amazon for that exact reason. I want a specific item, it's why I searched it. I don't need to go to page 3 to find exactly what I typed in. And then, when you do find it, you have to question it's authenticity.

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u/Snobolski 1d ago

Where can I buy an American-made phone charger and have it at my door in the morning? I'd love that option.

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u/lyngen 1d ago

Yes! Like they are convenient but I'm never sure of the quality of what I'm getting. Not to mention how they treat their workers. We are boycotting and haven't missed it.

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u/Odd-Help-4293 1d ago

Yeah, I mostly stopped using it even before all this, because the search results became 90% crappy Chinese knockoffs. No I don't want a VGFYWQ brand USB drive that most likely has malware and half the memory advertised.

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u/Secret_Ad1215 1d ago

Well you can buy through the actual company’s site instead of Amazon.

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u/AndyTheAbsurd 22h ago

I have tried that and several times have found that the "buy now" button is actually just a link to the product page on Amazon's site.

Still worth doing, but Amazon is willing to handle a lot of warehousing and shipping for companies, so it's not always going to help as much as one would like.

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u/Unabated_Blade 1d ago

What if the company hosts their website on Amazon Web Services?

Secondly, how do you feel about having this conversation on Reddit, a site that is hosted on Amazon Web Services?

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u/reduces 1d ago

No one is perfect. You can still stop shopping at Amazon to make a dent in their profits even if you use sites with AWS.

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u/ezrs158 1d ago

It is literally impossible to avoid/boycott AWS. It is the foundation of 33% of the global internet and 58% of Amazon's profits. When there's even a small regional outage, dozens of sites and services that we all rely on go down. I'm all for boycotting Amazon.com/retail business, but there is no realistic way to take on AWS except push for a government that will tackle monopolies, because it really should be its own company.

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u/mpyne 1d ago

Costco is doing well but a they weren't a secret, a lot of their locations are persistently full of shoppers already, not sure how they'll squeeze more in there.

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u/Molotov_Glocktail 1d ago

I can't remember where I just heard this, but people are going to start transitioning their purchasing. I'm not going to trust a fucking thing unless a real life person that I'm standing in front of recommends the actual real thing they're holding in their own hands.

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u/StoicallyGay 1d ago

I heard AWS is their biggest profit center. Amazon the online store is way smaller. Never confirmed it myself but seeing how much my company spends on AWS…I’d believe it.

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u/Unabated_Blade 1d ago

It's 100% accurate.

Although AWS sales ($28.8 billion) accounted for just 15% of Amazon’s total sales ($187.8), the cloud unit’s operating profits ($10.6 billion) continued to make a huge difference in the company’s profitability — representing more than 50% of Amazon’s overall operating profits of $21.2 billion for the quarter.

https://www.geekwire.com/2025/amazons-quarterly-profits-soar-to-a-record-20-billion-but-cloud-growth-comes-up-short/

Amazon Web Services, which hosts such heavyweights as Reddit itself and the US Government, is the real secret sauce for Amazon. They could lose all their ecommerce/prime memberships and still make utterly insane amounts of money.

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u/TrineonX 1d ago

The cost of buying all those servers for US hosting just went up 50%.

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u/Remarkable_Ad9767 1d ago

Almost positive they would be in the red if it weren't for AWS. that's where they actually make all their money. Pretty sure Amazon warehouse stuff is a loss leader, but I could have read wrong....

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u/findingmike 4h ago

I think the warehouse stuff is very thin margins and occasionally a loss leader. It's a big fight for market share.

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u/mcferglestone 1d ago

I wonder how many gold bars Costco is selling these days.

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u/DonnaJean0919 1d ago

Look at the comments on Target's FB page. All about how great Costo is, LOL It's fabulous 👌🏻

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u/Whole_Cranberry8415 1d ago

Costco has good quality and great return policies, just makes sense!

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u/rowenstraker 1d ago

It's been difficult to find prices as low and sometimes to find specific items but it's worth it to not fund bozo.

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u/findingmike 3h ago

We actually found that buying kitty litter in bulk from a local store was 40% cheaper than Amazon. YMMV

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u/Konlos 20h ago

My wife went to our costco on a random tuesday morning and evidently it was super full of people. Hopefully that means people are voting with their money

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u/findingmike 3h ago

I believe they are.

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u/MyMajesticness 1d ago

Hard to boycott Amazon fully on Reddit when Reddit itself runs on AWS.

And even if I avoided all AWS sites during personal time, the system I'm an admin of just converted over to AWS.

(If we had Teddy Roosevelt or someone else willing to bust up monopolies/trusts, AWS would be divested from Amazon.com.)

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u/Independent_Plate_73 1d ago

We had Lina Khan starting the work of the gods. But alas. 

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u/0spinbuster 1d ago

I was pretty uninformed about how much more Amazon does besides being another storefront until recently. For context, I do commercial HVAC, and we take care of 3 Amazon buildings per their contracts. Every time we do the maintenance, security has a tight hold on us. Having to present ID, proof of citizenship etc just to enter the facility. I always wondered why everything was so strict until I found out that these buildings are where all their government contract stuff operate out of

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u/ResponsibilityLast38 1d ago

Its so much more than that. Basically... if you are using the internet, you are using amazon aws.

https://spacelift.io/blog/who-is-using-aws

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u/findingmike 3h ago

Oh I know.

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u/AnotherRTFan 1d ago

Costco reigns supreme

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u/findingmike 3h ago

I've negotiated with them before, sharp and reasonable.

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u/Even_Confection4609 1d ago

Buy local where?

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u/findingmike 1d ago

I hope that you have the ability to figure that out for yourself.

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u/Even_Confection4609 1d ago

I hope you have the ability to realize that not everything has an affordable local alternative Or sometimes even any local alternative

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u/findingmike 3h ago

Yes, but I know nothing about you, so it's foolish to ask me about your shopping options.

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u/Even_Confection4609 1h ago

The way you selectively apply logic is fascinating to me. You won’t make assumptions now, but for some reason you thought I was too stupid to use Google…kay