I would prefer that people respond to my arguments, not with ponderous attempts at ridicule, but with reasoned counter argument.
You may think my points laughable but you know who else isn't laughing? TARGET.
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Target, signaling its growing irritation with its rival Amazon, announced on Wednesday that it would stop selling the online retailer’s Kindle e-readers.
Target, with almost 1,800 stores, is one of the bigger carriers of Kindles in the offline world, though most of the devices are sold at Amazon’s Web site.
Like other big retailers, Target has been trying to figure out how to stop Amazon shoppers from visiting Target stores to check out products, and then buy them online from Amazon. It is a practice encouraged by Amazon; over the Christmas holiday, for example, the company offered a promotion on its Price Check app that gave shoppers 5 percent off any item scanned at a store.
Now that retailers like Target are aware of this so-called showrooming, carrying Amazon’s Kindle is a little “like Starbucks selling Dunkin’ Donuts gift certificates,” said Michael Norris, a senior analyst for Simba Information.
Target warned in January that it wouldn’t sit back.
“What we aren’t willing to do is let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut our prices,” Target executives wrote in a letter to vendors, asking them to think of new pricing and inventory strategies, according to a note that Deborah Weinswig, a Citi analyst, sent to clients.
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Now it should be obvious to all upright walkers that Target can't be put in the buggy whip manufacturer's box. Unlike the Enlightened Ones here, Target thinks of this as a serious problem and has asked its vendors to think hard about how to deal with the problem. Apparently, ignoring the problem or thinking that Father Internet will fix things aren't options for Target.
Who else thinks this is a serious problem?, Why, those morons at the Wall Street Journal:
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The WSJ notes that it looks like Amazon will almost always be able to beat the likes of Target on price for most merchandise because Amazon pays less for overhead and allows cloud data storage and other profitable parts of its business to subsidize the retail side:
“The traditional retailers are still doing business the old way while Amazon has reinvented the model,” says Sucharita Mulpuru, retail analyst at Forrester Research. “Wal-Mart and Target are willing to sell a few things at a loss. Amazon’s whole business is a loss leader.”
Read more: http://moneyland.time.com/2012/01/24...#ixzz1vJpFDrWj
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What else is Target-and Best Buy and Walmart-doing to fight back?
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Retailers have long complained of Amazon's unfair competitive advantage because the online retailer is exempt from charging state and local sales taxes . Last spring, Target, along with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT ), Best Buy Co. Inc . (NYSE: BBY ), The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD ), and other retailers threw their collective weight behind the Alliance for Main Street Fairness, a coalition that is leading efforts to change sales-tax laws in more than a dozen states, including Texas and California.
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In other words, some of the greatest retailers in the world seem to agree with me that fighting for sales tax fairness is one way of combatting the problem. BUt what the hell? Those guys don't know their businesses as well as the geniuses here at Mobile Read , I'm sure.
