Maybe Amazon Should Buy Kohl’s
Amazon deal-making has been in the news lately. So, last week we considered the report that Amazon is looking at AMC Theaters. We wondered, what other relatively inexpensive public companies might fit into Amazon’s future plans?
Amazon and Kohl’s started working together in 2017, when Kohl’s began accepting Amazon’s customer returns. Since then they have experimented with promotions, including selling Amazon Echo devices and other branded electronics. We can think of a few reasons Amazon should buy Kohl’s and further control that part of the Amazon business. Investment bankers, Amazon executives, and Kohl’s executives probably have dozens of reasons why not, but we still make the case here. Amazon sure can afford it: Kohl’s market cap is about $2.5 billion and the share price is down 70% from its 2018 peak.
Amazon Customers Already Prefer Kohl’s for Amazon Returns
We thought about this relationship as we analyzed Amazon customer returns patterns earlier this year. We were a little surprised to see that almost 20% of US merchandise returns currently go through Kohl’s (Chart 1).