Amazon Backlash
From the NY Times tech blog:
Amazon’s effort to pay shoppers to scorn physical stores is prompting
a bit of a backlash. The retailer is offering a bounty for those who
venture to the mall or Main Street on Saturday and compare the price
of items against Amazon’s price. Customers who use a special price
check app on their smartphone will get up to $5 off on up to three
qualifying products from Amazon in eligible categories (electronics,
toys, sports, music and DVDs).This is not sitting well with physical retailers and their fans. There
is a budding Occupy Amazon: Shop Local movement on Facebook. The
American Independent Business Alliance said it was “jolting” to see
the company “overtly encouraging people to spy on local stores while
turning those businesses into showrooms for Amazon’s profit.” The
alliance also noted that while Amazon said it was doing this to lower
prices, the comparative data might also encourage it to raise prices
on some items to a level just marginally below the physical stores’ prices.Oren Teicher, chief executive of the American Booksellers Association,
wrote in an open letter to Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, that this
was “the latest in a series of steps to expand your market at the
expense of cities and towns nationwide, stripping them of their unique
character and the financial wherewithal to pay for essential needs
like schools, fire and police departments, and libraries.”
Link to the rest at the New York Times and thanks to K.W. for the tip.
“the financial wherewithal to pay for essential needs
like schools, fire and police departments, and libraries.””
Yes please!
Here in small town America we have big box stores which aren’t local, and we have local stores but their prices are too high as they have to pay for the corrupt local government.
I love Amazon!
You didn’t pick up the bit about the retaliation, PG.
“One of the most imaginative
comes from Third Street Books in McMinnville, Ore., which is offering
customers a 15 percent discount and a $5 gift certificate if they
bring in proof they have closed their Amazon accounts.”
CLOSE their Amazon accounts? Gee, that’s not nasty at all, now is it?
Customers have been doing this same sort of comparison shopping for years. And years. I’m only surprised it took any company this long to figure out how to exploit the habit.
Yes, and how long would the account stay closed? Long enough to get the bounty I guess. Dim idea.
I’m not finding it now, but I’m fairly certain I saw that people have to spend $100 on those qualifying items at Amazon to get the five bucks.
While I think local retailers have a point, it’s a fairly high bar to get over for a maximum five percent rebate.
But here’s a thought, local retailers: keep finding a way to compete.
In an other life, I worked retail in a very crowded industry: CDs. We were a regional chain of 10 stores and we competed with Best Buy, Target, Blockbuster, the selection of mall chains, and a nascent online concern called Amazon.
By all means we should’ve been sunk by any one of those guys. But we weren’t. How? We found ways to compete with them that none of them could touch. First, we dropped prices to at least be in the ball park… not the cheapest, but not the most expensive, either. We always had stocked depth and breadth of catalog, and kicked their asses on product knowledge and service, so turned that up a bit. Finally, we added used CDs to help make up the margin we lost on price. It did very little good to gripe about how those mean big box stores that were out to get us. In fairness, the company did finally go out of business, but that had more to do with a bungled acquisition by a highly-leveraged regional chain than it did anything else.
The actual point that the Brick and Mortar stores are making is that you can’t visit an Amazon store to meet your favorite author who, out of their own pockets will do signings at local bookstores. I’ve enjoyed meeting many authors that way. Granted I live in NYC and have a plethora of brick and mortar stores, not even counting B&Not so Noble.
How many of you would give up that chance to meet 3 or 4 authors who are road tripping together to save gas so they can meet their fans in person?
I’ve been to a lot of book signings as an author and Mrs. PG has been to even more. After the first couple, neither of us enjoyed the experience. Most authors I’ve spoken with feel the same way. One of the benefits of indie world is no book signings.
To be clear, I’m happy to meet readers and talk with them, but every time I’ve calculated royalties earned vs. time spent at a book signing, the picture hasn’t been good.
And for the swath of people who live in flyover country? A goodly portion of people who love books aren’t getting author signings at all (assuming they have a bookseller in their town) and its been that way for a long, long time. As such, I’m not buying the “you can’t meet your favorite author at Amazon” meme because there just aren’t that many opportunities to do that now for a significant population of book buyers.