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Where Did All The Online Bargains Go?
cornflux writes: "There's something I've wondered recently -- 'Where did all the good deals go?' It seems I'm not the only one -- Business 2.0 has an article about the noticable lack of bargains available online, today. The author covers obvious reasons (dried up VC, need for real profit) and some others (pseudo-price fixing). The one thing that was missed is the ever-increasing number of morons who will pay full-retail price + 20% for things on eBay." Note that the piece is largely theoretical -- I've found consistently better prices on the web, even recently, than I have in-store for electronic goods, as well as obscure DVDs which I couldn't find locally anyhow.
That explains everything. There are too many idiots on Ebay, and people too lazy to comparison shop.
Repeal the DMCA!
Too many folks havre found out (as I did) that selling on the net is a good way to waste time and lose money. You run into nut cases, bozos and all the rest who think that because you sold them something (at around cost) that you now owe them the sun the world and the stars in support. The net was and is a good place to sell or buy a commodity item with no support included.. It is also a good place to find the obscure (as you have noted), but for bargains on things that need support, this guy isn't going to be the seller.
That's the heart of the matter. Though a typical Slashdot user's online shopping probably consists of hunting down deals on RAM through Priceline, the average shopper is simply looking for convenience and selection. They're willing to pay a little more for it, too. This mirrors the rest of the catalog shopping world- which the online shopping world is just another part of. And surprise, the online winners, with very few exceptions, are the same companies who have been doing mail order successfully for the last 20 years- Lands End, LLBean, etc.
The death of these businesses has been a good thing for my online bookstore, which is an addition to a business that has been around for twenty years. Now we can reasonably compete with fair prices, whereas before it was hard because of all the damn giveaways and businesses selling merchandise at a loss.
Its not a good thing for the economy in general if you have a bunch of businesses blowing through venture capital by selling their merchandise at a loss or giving it away. But that was the business plan for a great many merchants trying to establish themselves online. Good riddance, I say.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
You can still get some decent deals on line (Computergeeks.com, anyone?) but overall you're not going to save a great deal on the MSRP online -- unless you're bargain hunting or the site is running a promotion.
Companies finally realized that they can't survive on razor-thin and non-existant margins. The stores that thrive on the 'Net will be ones that offer things that can't be easily found locally -- like the stuff at PCMods, ThinkGeek and all kinds of collector goods. It's also easier to set up a distribution system online for products that don't have a wide appeal, so only producing and shipping a small number makes sense. (Computer badges come to mind...)
Playing the pricing game doesn't really help in the long run -- the stores don't make enough to survive, and it hurts the companies who make the products. If people get used to the idea, for example, that they can buy Red Hat at cost they'll be reluctant to pay full price -- ever. If online stores run enough promotions, people simply learn to wait for the next deep discount instead of buying when they want the product.
I still prefer to do my shopping for many things online (books, computer parts) but I'd rather browse when looking for CDs or clothing.
How about paying $30 for shipping a dimm? Maybe people got fed up with that shit. Lots of places have 'low prices' until you get to the checkout, and there's an ass-reaming shipping and handling charge. It's usually easy to tell: they won't quote shipping "until you finalize your order" because they know you won't bother. They hope to catch the "oops, I didn't read that" crowd.
I see this as a sign that online shopping is starting to become less of a novelty and more of an everyday thing.
Lots of those online price breaks were to encourage people to try online shopping. As more and more people start to buy online, the need to offer incentives goes down and the need to actually profit from online business goes up. It's a classic ploy that even Homer Simpson recognized: "Get us addicted then jack up the price!"
As for the auction sites, it shows to me that sellers are starting to take them seriously. In the past people might have put up a bit of old junk to see how the auction site worked. If it sold for next to nothing, that was okay - chock it up to research. Now, sellers know there are people out there willing to pay for hard-to-find, high demand items, and they set their minimum bids accordingly.
Of course this quasi-recession we're in isn't helping matters, but I think that's only a small part of it. To me this is just the natural evolution of doing business online.
The one thing that was missed is the ever-increasing number of morons who will pay full-retail price + 20% for things on eBay."
Bypassing the obvious trollish nature of the word "morons," allow me to educate you. People who live in rural areas cannot walk down to the corner Wal*Mart, Kmart or Target to buy cheap crap. Contrary to popular believe, box stores have not infiltrated every city and town yet. Some people have to drive 100 miles or 6 hours, whichever is more inconvenient.
Much of this cheap crap is not sold online, so these people must use sites like Ebay to buy products that are otherwise unavailable to them. Paying more on Ebay is cheaper than the alternative.
The problem with all these billions of dollars that were used up and wasted on building these online businesses is this: that money was not available to build more productive things.... like, say, power plants in California. And nearly all the money spent was to build unprofitable businesses that encouraged consumption. Despite what McTeer claims (if everyone would just join hands and buy an SUV), economies and wealth do not improve purely from consumption.
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Basically: you cannot waste money in that magnitude without having a bad effect on the economy underneath. The subsequent crash and hard times for many techies can be directly related to this foolish overspending -- too many techs were hired in a hurry, so salaries went into the stratosphere, attracting many people into technology that would not otherwise have gone there. Now, there are too many techs, the unemployment rate is high, and salaries are dropping fast.
So, if you're a techie, you should be at least a little bit pissed about the 'stupid venture capitalists'. That money you saved on DVDs, etc. will be deducted from future paychecks.
I don't like profiteers that don't add value any more than it looks like you do, but if the seller buying stuff at Fry's and turning it for a profit is making it available to people who don't have access to the temple that is Fry's (me, for example), why shouldn't he be entitled to make money doing it?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
if the seller buying stuff at Fry's and turning it for a profit is making it available to people who don't have access to the temple that is Fry's (me, for example), why shouldn't he be entitled to make money doing it?
Didn't you just describe a distributor? This isn't profiteering, it's just normal business. Profiteering would be those Coke machines that tied the price to the temperature.
Reboot macht Frei.
Besides, Best Buy employees generally stay out of the way so you can make purchases...they don't hover around looking for a commision.
bleh