---
id: "quote-intermediary-economics"
type: "quote"
source_timestamps: ["§ The Retailer's Dilemma"]
tags: ["economics", "margins"]
related: ["claim-intermediaries-compress-margins"]
speaker: "Mikey Vu, Maureen Burns and Aaron Cheris"
speakers: ["Mikey Vu", "Maureen Burns", "Aaron Cheris"]
quote: "Adding more intermediaries to a marketplace almost always weakens the unit economics for existing vendors. Volume may grow, at times with a lower cost to acquire customers, but over the long run an intermediary will likely extract more of the value."
sources: ["geo"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-geo"
originDay: 3
articleStem: "hbr-nm-97-retailers-ai-shoppers"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/10/what-should-retailers-do-about-ai-shoppers"
sourceTitle: "What Should Retailers Do About AI Shoppers?"
---
# Intermediaries weaken unit economics

## Quote — Intermediaries weaken unit economics

> "Adding more intermediaries to a marketplace almost always weakens the unit economics for existing vendors. Volume may grow, at times with a lower cost to acquire customers, but over the long run an intermediary will likely extract more of the value."
> — [[entity-mikey-vu]], [[entity-maureen-burns]] and [[entity-aaron-cheris]]

**Why it matters:** The verbatim expression of [[claim-intermediaries-compress-margins]] and the economic heart of the piece. Note the hedges the authors themselves include — *"almost always,"* *"at times,"* *"likely"* — which the enrichment sharpens: intermediaries reliably *shift* where value is captured, but do not universally reduce total profit for adaptive vendors.