This weekend while at the book store I overheard this little comment, “I am really surprised how much I like this book. I think I will buy it from Amazon.com when I get home to save money.” Now they were already in the bookstore with the book in hand, liked the book but still were going to buy the book online because they knew it was a better deal. And with that little revelation It all made sense to me. When all things are equal, price is the motivating factor. Simple and easy right? Then I thought, what if retail store instead of attempting to sell their books to customers in store, what if the store was the place they could “test out the book” and they would have computer terminals where they could order online and have the book delivered to them at home like Amazon.com?
I know this sounds crazy, but just think about this for a minute. People are already doing this. I know that most RPG retailers have heard about someone coming to the store, looking at the product, and then purchasing the same product online. Why do people do this? Better yet, what can retail stores do to get back this sale? I think it would be best for retail stores to think like online stores and use the retail location as a “test drive” location but you get them to buy the product from your online store.
For example, a book store that might normally carry 200 copies of a number one seller, this retail store now might only carry 3 copies in the store. People come to the store; look at the product aka the “test drive”; then the retailer either sells them one of the copies they have or (what they really want to do) they send you to their website to purchase the product. Retail store could cut down on the amount of stock they are carrying which in turn reduces their overhead. This also will give them the ability to carry more diverse stock due to not have to carry large amounts of one specific title. While this may not work for everyone this is something you might want to think about. Talk to you later…
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