Amazon’s position today is eerily reminiscent of Walmart’s circa 1999
A BOA constrictor swallowing capitalism. A cyclone dragging the economy into its vortex. If youlook back at how people described Walmart a decade ago, it is eerily similar to how Amazon is viewed now. The supermarket chain has “a scale of economic power we haven’t encountered before”, warned “The Walmart Effect”, a best selling book in 2006.But capitalism never stands still. The world’s largest company by sales is now theperceived underdogin anescalatinggrocery war with Amazon to fill 320m American bellies. The struggle will probably end in a messy stalemate. That will mean mediocre returns for investors—and happy days forconsumers.
（ 市场都是风起云涌变幻莫测的！
underdog: a person,team, etc., that is expected to lose a contest or battle “丧家犬” 这里的意思可能没到这个程度，只是说walmart被认为在和亚马逊这一战中可能会输
escalating: to become greater or higher or to make something greater or higher)
Just when Walmart’s aura was at its mostintimidating, in 2006,stagnation beckoned. Its reputation for bullying its suppliers and staff became toxic. Over the next decade it hitsaturationpoint. About 95% of Americans shop at Walmart at least once a year. It has three square feet of shop space for every adult in the country and has sunk $83bn into a fixed-asset base that is the fourth-largest owned by any American firm. Investors have worried for years that this empire of aisles and tills run from Bentonville, Arkansas, would becomeobsolete—what did Walmart’s executives, schooled in the arts of beating up baked-beans suppliers, know about the slick world of e-commerce being dreamed up in Silicon Valley andSeattle?
（ saturation: the act or result of supplying so much of something that no more is wanted
这段没读懂.....）
More than you might think. This year Walmart’s shares have risen by 40% on hopes that it has more than a fighting chance. It is clear that selling groceries online is very different from selling books. In food, penetration of e-commerce is low, at 2%,compared with 9% for all retail.Food is perishable.People will not stuff it in their mouths unless they trust itsprovenance. They also want flexibility—to buy food in a store, to order online and pick it up themselves, or to have it delivered to their homes. So some physical infrastructure is helpful. “I wouldn’t want another set of assets,” Doug McMillon, Walmart’s boss, told the Economic Club of New York in November.
( 亚马逊是网上卖书起家，逐渐卖各种东西，现在和沃尔玛争夺生鲜市场。食物是很容易腐烂的，而且顾客对它的来源会很挑剔
provenance: the origin or source of something)
He has run Walmart’s businesses in Europe and Asia, where e-commerce for groceries is more developed. In 2016 Walmart spent $3bn buying Jet.com, an e-commerce firm whose boss, Marc Lore, now runs all Walmart’s online operations.Walmart has launched internet-based services such as “Easy reorder” and “Pickup discount” and formed a partnership with Latch, which lets its users open and lock their front doors remotely.On September 29th it acquired Parcel, a logistics startup. On December 6th it changed its legal name from Walmart Stores, to just Walmart.
(这段可以看出来，要找对的人做他们擅长的事。 买了jet.com后叫它老板负责沃尔玛的整个网上业务。又收购了物流公司，沃尔玛放大招。
但亚马逊也收购了wholefood，大战早已开始）
There are three reasons to be optimistic. First, Walmart’s performance has improved. In the most recent quarter, same-store sales rose by 2.7% year on year, and store traffic by 1.5%. Food sales increased at their fastest pace in six years. Sales from e-commerce represent only about 2% of the total but are rising at anannual rate of 50% (customers who shop online and in stores typically spend twice as much as those who only go to stores). Walmart has the second-most-downloaded retail app, after Amazon’s.
（沃尔玛的前景还是乐观的，最近一个季度销售增长2.7%，进店人流增长1.5%，网上业务尽管只占2%，但胜在增长够快，而且网上下单的金额是店里的两倍。还有沃尔玛的APP下载量是零售行业第二名！）
Second, Amazon’s behaviour is a backhanded compliment.In June it spent $14bn on Whole Foods,a mid-sized grocery chain, The deal brings Amazon more physical locations to sell, sort and dispatch goods. It also gives it trusted private-label brands,of the kind Walmart already has. If you type “spinach” into Amazon.com, bags of Whole Foods branded greenery appear.
（不懂这个点。。）
Lastly, the example of China points toa fusion of the online and physical worlds.In some ways the country is more advanced than America; e-commerce comprises 9% of grocery sales, according to Alliance Bernstein, a research firm. On November 20th Alibaba, an e-commerce giant, bought 36% of Sun Art Retail, a hypermarket retailer. Four of the six biggest Chinese supermarket chains have partnerships with e-commerce platforms. (Walmart, which has 424 stores in China, has teamed up with JD.com.)
（fusion: 1. a combination or misture of things 2. food prepared by combining methods and ingredients from different areas of the world- fusion cuisine, Asian fusion
中国的网购当然比美国发达，比任何一个国家都发达，无比想念淘宝！这里却只用了 in some ways, 我觉得这些西方国家就是没法放下这种高姿态承认中国在网购方便比他们强大）
The duel between Walmart and Amazon could go in two directions. It might escalate into a war across America,for both companies hate losing. Or each firm might conquer different geographical areas and demographic groups. Amazon could seize well-to-do cities, where population density is high and home delivery is more efficient. Walmart could continue to rule suburbia.
（两者相争的战局可能往两个方向发展，要么战火蔓延到全国，要么就是各自抢占不同的市场）
Either way, margins will probably be squeezed as Amazon throws money at the fight with its customary abandon. Mr McMillon knows this. “One of the challenges at Walmart is that we don’t have free money—we are expected to make a profit,” he says. The danger is that it overestimates how much physical presence it needs. If it went back to its position in 2006, it could cut its domestic asset base by 34% and still have 90% of Americans within 15 miles of a store. For every dollar of sales, it has twice as many square feet of sales and distribution space as Amazon’s retail operation (including Whole Foods). If Mr McMillon is brave hewill sell stores and return capital to investors. Walmart needs to make its balance-sheet leaner.
（又一段不知道它讲了什么点。。）
What’s in store for Amazon
Walmart is probably the mostformidableadversary Amazon has ever faced. Disrupting the music, book and media industries, each known for their Corinthian spirit and long lunches,was child’s play compared with taking on Walmart, with its fanatical commitment to low prices.
Walmart’s history is also a warning. If you examine the two companies’ financials, Amazon today looks almost identical to Walmart in 1999.It has annual sales of $160bn or so,low margins, fast growth,a ballooning asset baseand massive capital investment.The firm’s managers are on a high and investors have dizzying expectations for the future. But for the ten years after 1999, Walmart’s share price was as flat as a pancake, because all the good news was already baked in. The actual business of world domination turned out to be a long, hard slog.
（以史为镜，沃尔玛和亚马逊是两家特别相似的公司，年营业额大、低利润、高增长、不断膨胀的资产和巨大的资本投入。）
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Results
Lexile®Measure: 1000L - 1100L
Mean Sentence Length: 15.22
Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.18
Word Count: 989
这篇文章的蓝思值是在1100-1100L， 适合英语专业大二大三的水平学习，应该是经济学人里属于最简单的一列。
使用kindle断断续续地读《经济学人》三年，发现从一开始磕磕碰碰到现在比较顺畅地读完，进步很大，推荐购买！点击这里可以去亚马逊官网购买~