Amazon opens first bricks-and-mortar bookstore
seattletimes.com
seattletimes.com
> “Our goal is to do a great job selling lots of books,” Cast said.
> “We’re completely focused on this bookstore,” Cast said. “We hope this is not our only one. But we’ll see."
They could end up operating a very profitable chain of bookstores, and they have quite a few competitive advantages that might let them do just that.
This could easily extend to none-book purchases (probably the end goal). There are lots of products that are a little obscure that you don't find in physical shop but have high ratings.
Individual variation is significant enough that I don't think that Amazon's data-based understanding of (say) typical 5-year-olds does much to provide assurance that a gift is right for a particular 5-year-old.
If the particular recipient actually is an active Amazon purchaser -- especially with a strong rating history -- you might get some assurance, but that's a different thing (and more applicable to online than in-store sales, probably, anyway.)
Barnes & Noble definitely became a showroom for the Nook, but it was also selling books. This might imply that Amazon is re-deploying the same strategy but without the dead-weight of under-performing brick-and-mortar stores. (i.e. Amazon gets to use it's data to only put stores in places where it knows traffic, volume, and customer profiles will perform well.) I expect Barnes & Noble knew much less about its customers when it set up its network of stores...
There may have been less available data altogether, but what data was available indicated people shopped in and near malls, hence a lot of B&N in malls. But with malls seemingly slipping away, B&N will have to relocate or adjust more radically.
When customers walk into a Barnes and Noble (or any bookstore) and browse books but don't buy (for example, because they found a cheaper price online), they are most likely to end up on Amazon to complete the purchase. B&N did the work but Amazon got the money.
Amazon doesn't have that problem. They don't need to sell books in the store to "pay the store's operating expense" - they just need people to come in and browse.
Currently, Amazon doesn't compete for a high percentage of books (50%) moved through physical stores [2]. They are in the enviable position of being able to create stores that don't leak sales to competitors. This is the final nail in B&N's coffin.
[1] http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/05/amazon-has-basically...
[2] http://www.dailydot.com/business/ebook-sales-2013-revenue/
I never bought books and B&N because I knew I could get the book cheaper at Amazon. The same with toys when I used to shop at ToysRUs. But those are both goods that I'd actually like to buy on the spot. If I know that the price in the store is the same as online, I'd probably do a lot of in store purchases.
And since I'm a Prime customer, they save 2-day shipping cost to me (I'll continue to be a Prime customer).
Ever since then, I usually try to buy the book in B&N or wherever, provided that's where I am at the time.
(Something like a campus book store and textbooks, however, is an entirely different case...)
> weh8ban
> A hollow voice says, "Fool!'Every time I go there, I wonder how they keep the lights on. I leave and look back thinking, "Will this be my last visit?"
I dont know what they can do in order to stay in business. I don't buy books there. I have a weird taste in books, and they just aren't at B & N. I mainly buy old books at used book stores. I do buy magazines there though, and food and coffee.
If by some miracle, I was made CEO. I would try a few things.
I would get rid of Starbucks. All the food and coffee would be in-house. I would basically copy what Starbucks does, but add more food items. I would also expand the eating area. I think Starbucks does a great job, but I'd rather all my money going to B & N. It probally wouldn't be feasible--I imagine Starbucks has some great leases, and agreements?
I would add more seating to the store. No sofas, but more wood seats, and benches.
I would have all security in plain clothes.
They would all be open until 11 p.m., except Sunday.
Their employees are great. I would leave them alone.
I would add a used, and rare book room to each store.
I know I'm rambling, about a business, I know nothing about. I just don't want them to close.
For example, Best Buy, they knew people were coming in to sample goods and then buying it online. Their solution was simply to agree to price match Amazon, and that appears to have been quite successful, I know I have purchased things at physical BB instead of Amazon due to the policy.
They still make margins on their in-house warranties, and any goods sold not priced matched. I don't legitimately know if they lose money on some goods price matched on Amazon, or if they can pass some of it on to the manufacturer.
Just this week we were in Barnes and Noble, and we skipped buying things because they were cheaper on Amazon. It is sad but true.
PS - We did buy stuff on sale, and get coffee/cake at their little coffee shop, so we aren't complete monsters.
And even when people go into their store with the intent of buying, they don't, because of BB's poor customer service. My sister just did this - she wanted to buy an iPad, but couldn't find anyone to sell one to her (from the security-locked cabinet). So she did a search on her phone while standing in the store, and bought it from Walmart.com
I predict this Christmas will be BestBuy's last.
While it certainly conjures up negative associations for me - I would actually be in favor of a process with similarities to a drive-thru for pick up of online orders.
It may be nice to go inside and browse, but the experience in entropy that is now making even a minor purchase at Apple stores has me in avoidance of them.
Besides, Amazon is a logistics company.
They'd have to either use drones, or do constant runs from fulfillment centers to bookstores to make it significantly faster than the same-day / second-day delivery you already get with prime.
I'm not disagreeing that they need an alternative to delivery, and they know it. That's why they've been trying stuff like Amazon Lockers (in 7-11s and such) and why they're working on the drone delivery which could adapt to when you're home.
I don't think they're doing this because they have Apple retail store envy.
They've done the math and figured out that additional cost would be more than paid off through this means.
Not to mention the chance to get more Kindles into the hands of folks with low price sensitivity...
Swap Kindle for Nook, and you definitely can in B&N.
It's a neat idea, and a good way to put a public face on their business.
The major reason I'd still prefer to shop online is the reviews. I doubt that those are printed alongside the physical copies. Sure, I could read the reviews on my phone - but why not then finish my one-click "Buy" instead of walking all the way to a store just to look at my phone screen?
I hope that their employees are treated better than those in the warehouses, too. (from what I've heard, it's pretty bad behind the scenes).
A tie-in to an e-reader that still makes the bookstore money is a killer feature for me as a reader. Indies still haven't gotten that totally sorted yet, and it keeps me buying more paper books than I'd like, and also buying less books at indie's than I'd like at the same time.
You'd need an ereader with a small nfc reader or barcode scanner. Customers browsing the paper books in store could elect to buy the same book for the ereader in store if they wanted by just scanning the book with their ereader, then taking it up to the front and pressing a 'show cart' feature that would give a barcode for the cashier to scan, bringing up the cart total payable. Upon that payment finishing, the ereader would get a ping from a server and instruct it to download the ebooks just purchased. The store would get a majority of the cut of the vendor side of the sale (if amazon takes 30%, a bookstore would get 25% and the service provider/ebook mfg would get 5$).
This would allow people to support indie stores, continue to buy both ebooks and regular books, and do them both at the same time.
It's not a complete or foolproof plan, just an idea I had that could help batter down the hatches.
If Amazon books takes off, maybe they franchise it out and allow personal branding of some kind.
Either that, or this is a glitch in the Matrix and a digital store accidentally became real.
Seriously though, the digital-to-physical world touches like a cookbook row of the most wished-for cookbooks or Amazon's top preorders on a real shelf is fascinating. Almost surprising we don't see more things like that already in other stores. It's data eating the world.
Not ideal, I'll allow, but since the prices fluctuate there's not an easy way to do it without looooots of digital signage.
We don't have Amazon as such a big influence in my country, so I'm curious - does the price of a book on Amazon impact your decision to buy it?
Perhaps for the mass-market titles but once you start pushing into the long-tail then RRP becomes much more common.
Couple of random examples from Amazon UK this morning:
You Save: £0.72 (2%) You Save: £0.55 (2%)
I doubt many people will see savings like that as incentives. Rather, Amazon's advantage is that they actually offer such books for sale without the hassles of persuading a clerk to order a single copy for you, assuming their supplier carries it.
Used bookshops are closing and selling used books online is getting less and less profitable.