02-11-2013, 08:26 PM | #91 | |
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From the OP link:
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As for books, just one person made the charge-for-browsing suggestion, and she's not a retail bookseller. I wouldn't take the suggestion too seriously. Last edited by SteveEisenberg; 02-11-2013 at 08:28 PM. |
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02-11-2013, 08:52 PM | #92 | |
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02-11-2013, 09:15 PM | #93 |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...eal-bookstore/
The Washington Post has some responses from bookstore owners. |
02-11-2013, 10:35 PM | #94 |
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I wonder how much of a real phenomenon this is. I would expect it to be more prevalent at the big box stores rather than at small independent stores. Just because someone looks around and doesn't buy a book doesn't mean they were using your store as a showroom, it might just mean that they didn't buy a book today. The person who comes in your store is a whole lot more likely to buy a book than someone who doesn't come in your store.
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02-11-2013, 10:51 PM | #95 |
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I used to love browsing the bookstore - an experience that wasn't replaced by on-line shopping. Yet I would buy most of my fiction books from Amazon primarily so I can share them with my mom who lives 500 miles away (her Kindle is linked to my account).
To make up for it, I always made a point of buying 2-3 of reference/non-fiction books (which I prefer in paper) and magazines every visit. More than I will ever get to but I am a firm believer in doing my part to keep the stores/vendors that I frequent in business. However, Barnes and Noble no longer represents the bookstore experience to me. They used to have many tables/displays that I could easily browse and find a lot of new books. Now it seems that there are only books I've already read as more and more space is allocated to other things. So my desire to keep them in business has lost its steam. |
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02-11-2013, 11:00 PM | #96 | |
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It's common in every industry that has an online sales component.
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(I think you could potentially charge people for access to a book club ... but that's an entirely different model from a bookstore.) |
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02-12-2013, 01:26 AM | #97 |
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Before making a purchase, I usually browse Amazon, read the reviews, and make a decision. I then purchase locally. I'm long past trusting salespeople except maybe in regards to fly fishing.
The decision to buy locally is an ethical one meant to support the local economy. By the reasoning of some in this thread, perhaps I am unethically using Amazon. Yet I feel Amazon can shoulder the weight of having become a necessary source of information. Years ago I lived in Seattle and supported Amazon because it was a local company. I suspect that many people have shopping habits similar to my own. |
02-12-2013, 02:02 AM | #98 |
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In my perfect world... you could browse at your local bookstore to your heart's content and pick out your books. If you need an ebook format, they can sell it to you instead of the paperback or hard cover (your receipt has a code to download from the publisher's site; when you do that step, the store gets charged their lesser fee for the ebook).
I love browsing in book stores, I give my local bookstore business (I wouldn't even mind paying a bit higher than to Amazon), publisher gets money who gives author their money, it's win/win, everyone should be happy. Ok, back to reality where there's not a chance in hell and all my frolicking unicorns have disappeared. |
02-12-2013, 04:39 AM | #99 |
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Make shops showrooms with only display copies of books. That cuts down on needed floorspace. If a customer is "sold" on a book by the displayed copy or the staff he gets a code to enter when he orders the book or buys it online. By entering the code the customer gets a discount and the store gets credit and payment from the publisher for making the sale. Turn retail stores into essentially an advertising business paid by the publishers commisions not the customer.
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02-12-2013, 07:21 AM | #100 | |
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02-12-2013, 07:37 AM | #101 | ||
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Sometimes they buy, sometimes they don't. Not everybody that fails to buy is showrooming. In fact, unless the bookstore is well-placed in a high traffic area, people are *not* going to go out of their way to visit a bookstore just to showroom. So most likely people who invest the time and effort intended to buy but the store failed to close the deal. Given the limited catalogs of most B&M stores, compared to online, most online shoppers by now know better than to waste time showrooming and just go straight to the online sources. Which is to say, the prevalence of bookstore showrooming is way overstated. (I'm sure they'll all say the same thing, if they're honest; "It's a big industry problem but I don't see much of it.") Unless the customer actually pops out a phone to buy on the spot the odds are more likely the customer was just browsing to see if anything caught their eye and found nothing worth buying. Now, BEST BUY, they have a serious showrooming problem because TV and audio gear needs to be physically experienced before buying. But bookstores? They have bigger problems to worry about. Top of the list: generating traffic. For which problem a cover charge is counterindicated. But if they want to try it I'm sure Amazon and Kobo won't mind. Last edited by fjtorres; 02-12-2013 at 07:42 AM. |
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02-12-2013, 07:42 AM | #102 |
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I realize that I read a while back about bridal shops doing this, because brides were going in and trying on gowns (something that takes a lot of salesperson time) and then ordering online, and also because some people who weren't even planning to get married were trying on gowns just for fun.
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02-12-2013, 07:42 AM | #103 | ||
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I could see that working better than charging for admission. You like the book, you have some way of notifying the staff you want it (pull a paper slip? swipe a club card?) and then your books are pulled and sent to the cage behind the register. When they're down to the now much-abused display copy, that one gets sold at a deep discount. They're already doing it at computer parts stores. |
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02-12-2013, 07:59 AM | #104 |
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This is a request to those who have asserted that browsing without buying has some kind of ethical value: can you tell me what normative ethical positions you are relying on to make this assertion?
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02-12-2013, 08:43 AM | #105 | |
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And honestly, I just don't understand how it could be reasonable to conclude that it's unethical for a customer to use all of the information available to make an informed choice. The stores in your example made the choice to do retail in the way you describe; a customer not buying, for whatever reason is the cost of doing business that comes with that choice. These businesses should be pricing their products to take that into account, and if they can't then they fail which is sad but not the fault of consumers who made an informed business decision to buy from someone else. Full disclosure and a Question for you: I go to the local bookstore all the time and use a smartphone app to scan UPCs on the back of books to quickly get Amazon.com reviews; if I like the book I'll typically buy it at the store or grab an ebook from Kobo. Have I acted unethically by wasting Amazon's bandwidth when I had no intention of buying from them? Or is it only immoral when we want to protect a physical bookstore's business model? Last edited by Ninjalawyer; 02-12-2013 at 08:52 AM. |
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