Slashdot Mirror
Retailers Dread Phone-Wielding Shoppers
Ponca City writes "The WSJ reports that until recently, retailers could reasonably assume that if they just lured shoppers into stores with enticing specials, the customers could be coaxed into buying more profitable stuff too. But now, marketers must contend with shoppers who can use their smartphones inside stores to check whether the specials are really so special. 'The retailer's advantage has been eroded,' says analyst Greg Girard, adding that roughly 45% of customers with smartphones had used them to perform due diligence on a store's prices. 'The four walls of the store have become porous.' Although store executives publicly welcome a price-transparent world, retail experts don't expect all chains to measure up to the harsh judgment of mobile price comparisons, and some will need to find new ways to survive. 'Only a couple of retailers can play the lowest-price game,' says Noam Paransky. 'This is going to accelerate the demise of retailers who do not have either competitive pricing or a standout store experience.'"
I used my iPhone and the Red Laser app to scan all the toys my kids wanted. It shows all the prices for the stores around me, as well as online. I got approached by at least one sales person asking me what I was doing, and Toys R Us specifically was not happy. I got approached by a floor manager after the sales person approached me, and he asked to see the app. He looked none too happy. Why in the world would I not check if I had the ability??
I regularly pay a little more for goods that I know less about if I got good service. As long as the price is at least vaguely comparable, being able to physically touch and try out something is worth a bit of money to me. Especially when it's something where the salesperson helped me look at options, understood what I wanted, picked the best value for me, etc, and didn't just hand me which one they were pushing that week.
Of course... sometimes the markup is too high. I really wanted to buy a TV locally, but they "don't price match amazon," which means that the same TV at amazon was $1500 less... you've got to at least make the same ballpark.
"We are afraid now that customers can figure out we are cheating them with false advertising, before we manage to snatch their money."
It's a good thing to give the customers more transparency in who they do business with, but I am concerned that this will reduce competition even further to price warfare. Quality, safety, environmental sustainability and the welfare of employees may take even more of a backseat than it already does.
Needless to say, this transparency is not the root cause or a bad thing. However, with shoppers caring more about price than anything else, it is vital to regulate industry and retail to ensure that companies do not rape their people and the environment to stay competitive.
Admittedly not the way business is going these days, and this article is highlighting another nail in that coffin.
The very nature of capitalism requires steadily growing greed and want for larger profits. The only way a company can continue selling decent-quality products at realistic prices is if it has no desire to expand.
For some reason, "not expanding" is the same thing as "a business slowly dying", a concept which always eluded me. I mean, come on...if you're posting a profit, who cares if you're growing by 5% or 10% or whatever; you're still making a profit.
Living With a Nerd
You just hit on one of my fundamental disagreements with how the US economy now operates. Originally, when companies opened their stock for public purchase, the idea was to get a cash infusion to accomplish some objective (expansion, r&d, and so on). Those stock holders often received a dividend on that purchase. For instance they might have purchased stock at $10 per share, receiving a quarterly dividend of say $0.25. This essentially meant the investor often saw an immediate return on the investment when the company was profitable. In this case, a 10% return annually. This encouraged long term holding of the stock and a more stable stock price that didn't require dramatic 10% growth per year. If the stock holder held the example stock for 10 years before selling, the sale would be pure profit regardless of the stock price at the time of the sale. The problem is that a 100% publicly owned corporation gets very little benefit from the stock market once all of its shares have been bought up since the sales of its shares don't infuse new revenue into the company since those stock exchanges happen solely between 3rd parties.
Now stocks are bought and sold primarily for short term gains since most stocks don't produce dividends. The only motive there is the price of the share, which dictates that the company has to show profit growth. When a company makes a 3% growth in profit instead of 5%, the share price usually takes a significant hit, which is very illogical considering the company has actually improved its value per share. Wall Street now operates on totally unrealistic expectations of infinite 5-10% annual growth which is obviously unsustainable in the long term. This seems painfully obvious to me, but I never hear financial analysts discuss it on "news" shows.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
Hmm. Perhaps you could call it Target?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!