Hopefully they maintain their quality. I always treated them as a specialty store, where I could get specific hard to find, or high quality items, particularly cheese.
If they cut too deep, they loose their appeal (at least to me).
For what it's worth, they absolutely can cut their prices and continue to keep the current level of quality simply because amazons investors care far less about profits than whole foods former investors did.
In Q3 whole foods made 3,725 with a gross profit of 1,268 representing a profit margin of 34% and their current P/E ratio is around 35, Amazon for context has a P/E ratio of 240 at time of writing.
This means, that amazon can reduce the price of food by quite a bit and keep their investors happy. Amazon, based on the comparison between the two companies P/E ratio, can cut that profit margin by a factor of 7, meaning whole foods fits perfectly within amazon's model (unless they were to direct profits elsewhere), with the ability to reduce their prices there by 25% on average (representing a billion of dollars returned to consumers).
However, with such a price reduction, it's very possible that whole foods could become a mass market grocery store, while keeping it's current brand prestige. Additionally according to http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-more-expensive-is-wh... the prices are really only 15% more than normal grocery stores, so amazon can choose to keep even more of the profit that they could afford to return to their customers (by investment standards) while also still undercutting the competition.
Gross is irrelevant here. Net profit is 2.85% - if Amazon drops by 5% and doesn't introduce savings/efficiency, they will be losing money on Wholefoods.
Agreed. Whole Foods' reputation is a high-end one. If quality drops or the typical assortment of goods becomes more like a lower-end chain, then I'll likely lose any reason to go.
Honestly Whole Foods could drop their prices by quite a bit, increase their efficiency in some areas such as no more blanket allowance for returns, and still make tons of money.
Whole Foods is the only place I've ever returned food. Once, I returned some clams and muscles, because when I got home, it was obvious they were bad. I also returned some produce that literally wasn't eatable the next day.
I've returned food to many stores over the years. 100% quality control isn't achievable, especially with products where the difference between "perfect" and "forbidden weapon of war" is measured in days.
Amazon itself is also (of course) wholly owned and operated by Amazon and they've had a major problem with letting counterfeit goods into their inventory. (Most of the discussion on HN seem I have disappeared):
If they cut too deep, they loose their appeal (at least to me).