Slashdot Mirror
Retail Chains To Strike Back Against Online Vendors
Hugh Pickens writes "Marissa Taylor says the retail chains' worst nightmare are consumers who come in to take a look at merchandise in-store, but use smartphone apps to shop for cheaper prices online. But now stores like low-end retail chain Target plan to fight 'showrooming' by scaling up their business models and asking vendors to create Target-exclusive products that can't be found online. 'The bottom line is that the more commoditized the product is, the more people are going to look for the cheapest price,' says Morningstar analyst Michael Keara. 'If there's a significant price difference [among retailers] and you're using it on a regular basis, you're going to go to Amazon.' Target recently sent an 'urgent' letter to vendors, asking them to 'create special products that would set it apart from competitors.' Target's letter insisted that it would not 'let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut our prices without making investments, as we do, to proudly display your brands.' Target also announced that it had teamed up with a handful of unique specialty shops that will offer limited edition merchandise on a rotating basis within Target stores in hopes of creating an evolving shopping experience for customers. Target is 'exercising leverage over its vendors to achieve the same pricing that smaller, online-only retailers receive,' says Weinswig. 'This strategy would help Target compete with retailers like Amazon on like-for-like products.'"
This has been done in the UK for some time, though for slightly different reasons. Having exactly the same product aside from it having a different model name/number used to be something a couple of camera manufacturers used to do for Dixons/Currys/PCWorld. It meant that price-match offers could be very generous (Found it cheaper elsewhere? We'll refund three times the difference!), because they would never need to pay out as no one else carried that exact model (well, they did, but with a different label) except those three stores which always had it at the same price as they are all owned by the same parent group.
A lot of places that do price matching already do this.
It'll be SKUs #####A, #####B, #####C.
Retailers #1, #2, #3, each get the respective SKU, despite being an identical product. And when you try to price match they won't as it's technically a different item. Of course they leave off how they are the only ones who sell that SKU and thus would price match themselves.
This has been going on for years in the mattress industry. Identical products are sold under different labels, with huge markups. So there is an incentive to confound comparison shopping. They don't care about customer satisfaction or loyalty, because a mattress is not a frequent purchase.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The ONLY reason to go into a brick and mortar store is if you absolutely have to have it right now.
Big stores like Target, I totally agree. But for lots of specialty items (bikes, quality shoes, quality clothing), a brick-and-mortar can still offer expert assistance to keep customers. Sure, you can buy all those things online, and mine the collective opinions, but a seasoned sales professional can help you pick out what's right for you, not what the masses rank the highest. Unfortunately, I don't see that value-add model working for anything in Target, or even Best Buy, who's sales team, in my opinion, tends to know little about the products they sell.
Depends on the product as some stores will really assrape you on price for what should be a common as dirt product. Take 100 packs of blank DVDs, its not like they have an expiration date, DVD burners are as common as dirt and on every new PC and laptop, so WTF? I walk into Wally World and they want $48! I walk into staples and its $46! I can grab the Amazon brand for less than $20 or Verbatim for $25 or so, and frankly i've not had any trouble out of the Amazon store brand.
So at least for certain items I've found the B&M stores aren't even close. thumbsticks, any kind of memory card, blanks, DVD burners, basic bog standard stuff that you wouldn't think they would gouge like a Monster Cable on they very much do. If it was only a couple of bucks more i wouldn't care, taxes or no, but i'm not paying double just to get it now, thanks ever so. Hell the local Walmart wanted $19.99 for a lousy 4Gb thumbstick! Give me a fricking break! That's 4 times the price the same stick is going for on newegg, what are they nuts?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So much cheaper than Kroger/Ralph's; an $80 bill at Ralph's is literally $50 at a TJs.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
now that manufacturing is all but dead
It is?
According to United Nations data, the U.S. is still the largest manufacturing country in the world. In 2009, American manufacturing output (in real terms) was nearly $2.2 trillion. That's about 45% larger than China's, at just under $1.5 trillion.
Can China compete with American manufacturing
Dilbert RSS feed
I have literally never in my life bought one of those "similar products". I don't even look at them...it's pretty much banner blindness to me now.
A brick and mortar store, however, forces me to physically wander multiple aisles I would otherwise not go down, deliberately obfuscates high-demand items by forcing you to search through shit you don't need to find them, and in some cases, even makes it impossible to get a product without dealing with a fucking salesperson who's going to try and sell me a goddamned replacement plan or $200 Monster Cable to go with it whether I want it or not.
Speaking of Best Buy, I've actually had a salesperson ask me if I was going to buy one of those replacement plans, and when I said "Nope" told me he had to get my product out of the back and never returned. I saw him 15 minutes later as I was walking out trying to sell a plan on a $30 printer to some older woman. He was even holding it while he talked to make sure she didn't bail on him. I complained to the manager on duty about how it sure seemed like his employees didn't want to help people not buying service plans and he started trying to talk me into getting one. Never even got an apology (not that I really expected one...it's fucking Best Buy).
Yeah, to hell with that crap...I'll stick with Amazon.
Actually, that's just the opinions of slash readers. Target explicitly said they wanted unique, special products that made them stand out from the commodity market. Failing that, they want their vendors to give them prices which allow them to compete with the online stores. Check out TFA, it is very informative.
cameltoe
TTIWWP.
Just sayin'.