Amazon recently announced a new plan to increase the usage of their price check app. In typical tech news fashion, the story has been making its way around the blogosphere but not everyone is singing its praises. Many people are looking critically at Amazon and claiming their most recent tactic is a veiled attempt to disrupt local stores. But is it just good business? Find out after the jump as well as how Amazon will give you free money this weekend.
Amazon is already well known for often being the cheapest in the business. It's hard to compete with their daily discounts on books and other popular offerings. But now Amazon is hoping to take it a step further with the introduction of the weekend-long Price Check reward.
All Amazon asks you to do is go to a store and scan a barcode. Simple enough, right? Doing so can get you $5 off a single product (in total 3 products allowed for a savings of up to $15). Why does Amazon want to do this? A few good reasons. First, it encourages people to download the app. The higher the app download numbers, the better it looks for Amazon. It also engages people with the application. If they haven't played with it for a while, they'll be sure to take it out this weekend and begin hunting. There is also the clear benefit of finding a better price on Amazon and ordering there. So what's the big deal?
Well some people see this as a backhanded way of undercutting physical stores (and more important, small, local business.) These smaller stores sometimes don't even have a web presence and rely entirely on their physical location. But many store owners realize just how detrimental online shopping can be to their business. People will go to the store simply to test out a product or see it person. Then they return home to buy it online.
Another aspect to this deal is the vast amount of data Amazon will likely cull from it. This is an inexpensive way to crowd source valuable information to Amazon: what is cheaper and where. But is it wrong?
We're still working that out. It leads us to questions similar to those that we have for the publishing business right now. Should people continue to buy printed material (or products in stores) simply for the novelty? No. So what makes them better? Local stores are simply going to continue to get pushed out of the market unless they can learn to co-exist along with major companies like Amazon. What can local businesses offer that Amazon cannot? Better customer service? More personalized shopping experience? So no, we don't think Amazon is in the wrong here (although they certainly have gotten a lot of negative press.) They're simply using their assets in a smart way. And besides, people don't have to price check tiny hole-in-the-wall businesses. You could price check and compare other big box retailers and hopefully create a clash of the titans.
(Image: Flickr member mackarus licensed for use by Creative Commons.)
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I really disagree with the thought that this is an 'attack' on local businesses. The vast majority of products that it's worthwhile to pricecheck are sold by other, physical big box stores.
If Amazon forces Best Buy's prices down, that is not a bad thing.
This seems to be a lot of hysteria over nothing. I use price checking apps all the time. More often than not I buy the product in the store I find it in. Shipping, and whatnot, mean I'll pay more in store just to get it now.
I work in a local toy store. We're closing the shop at the end of this year. One of the reasons being that the Paper Source opened a store almost right beside us, and carries most of our novelty toys (and even some baby toys). In regard to price checking on Amazon, I would hope customers would be willing to pay a few more dollars at a local store- because eventually all that's left will be Amazon, and i find that depressing. Please support your local stores!
This has been an ongoing problem, and not just with online retailers. One of the reasons a lot of local electronics shops here got shut down was they were marginally undercut by Best Buy.
People would still go to the smaller stores to get help, because the service was better, then after using the salespersons time they would go to best buy to purchase the item.
The funny thing is the savings wasn't that great. 30-50 dollars on a 1000 dollar isn't a big deal. Saving that 50 bucks over time killed the smaller retailers, and now people just bitch about how bad the service is at bestbuy.
Amazon is slowly doing the same thing. It will suck because while I am no fan of BestBuy I do like to actually see a product before a buy it, or in the case of clothing to try it on. Online shopping is great for some products, but the decline of small retailers for some products is sad. The thing is there isn't much you can do about it, and it isn't like people actively considered the outcome of their actions. They just wanted to save a few bucks.
It's kinda a dick move. Because it's good for Amazon's business doesn't make it any less of a dick move.
A friend of mine is a small business owner. She was hoping that this would actually drive people into her store; where she also hoped they would realize how wonderful her shop is, and how they're not all that more expensive than Amazon
For my shopping habits, it doesn't make a difference. When I buy gifts on Amazon, they tend to fall into three general categories: electronics/appliances, DVDs, and kitchen tools. There are always people on my list who want those things, and by ordering through Amazon, I get them shipped to me for free.
Now, if I was to go to a store to buy those items, it would be a store like Best Buy or Target, not some small local business.
The gifts I buy at local stores are things like clothing, jewelry, food gifts, alcohol, art, etc. I know people can order all these things on Amazon, too, but I suspect that the categories I mentioned (along with books) are the main money-makers at Amazon, which makes me feel like this whole thing is a lot of fuss about nothing. I'm not ignoring Mom & Pop's DVD Shop by shopping on Amazon, I'm ignoring Wal-Mart.
Wow. We get mad when companies make money, but we get mad when they save us money too.
I usually only use price-checking apps when in big-box stores and for larger items. When I shop local (and I do), I don't mind spending a few extra dollars. I bought as much as I could from local shops this year for xmas.