Bricks vs. Clicks

It's the middle of the holiday shopping season and your local brick-and-mortar retailer continues doing everything it can to fend off online competitors.  BusinessWeek recently ran an article called More Clicks at the Bricks and it's well worth reading.  The book industry is represented with this quote from B&N's Len Riggio: "Five years from now, to what extent will people see buying a gift at retail as essential?"

Wow, that's a tough question from the head of a chain that's been waging a long war against the biggest online player of all, Amazon.  I still feel one of the biggest untapped opportunities for the brick-and-mortar bookstores is to better integrate their physical stores with their online presence.  I should be able to tell them what zipcode I'm in so that they can offer me the same online price at my local store.  Yes, that results in a deeper discount than if I simply go to the physical store and buy it, but how many people go from web page to physical store?  It's usually the other way around: They might see it in their local store, go home and buy it on Amazon at the better price.  How about adding a new level to the Member program where I pay an annual fee so that I can get the online price in the store?  Set that fee too high and nobody signs up, but if they pick the right pricing level they could do quite well...and drive even more traffic to the store.

The grocery store noted in this article "gets it."  It's a store called Bloom and customers can use their website to "key in a shopping list and get a printout of the aisles they need to hit."  So obvious and yet so brilliant.  The article goes on to say that this "can be risky, because when shoppers know what they want and where to find it, they may be less likely to buy on impulse."  Maybe, but I've never seen anyone at a grocery store with blinders on.  No matter how short my list is when I go in, even if it's just one item and I know exactly where it is, I usually wind up coming out with more.  It's all about getting people into the store to begin with and this service is a great way to lure the customers in.

Comments

[Ellen Gerstein]

Whoever said the following:

"can be risky, because when shoppers know what they want and where to find it, they may be less likely to buy on impulse."

has never been shopping with me. Give me a list, and take me to Target and you'll see how much comes home that isn't on the list.

That's a great example of using technology to limit your customers. Instead, technology gives you greater reach to your customers and can help you understand them better.