Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
Showrooming isn't any different from a moral standpoint than comparison shopping; there's no moral obligation to pay more money. This is just a shift in consumer behaviour, there's no moral component to it. And to those that complain about slipping morals, are you complaining about declining morals, or a decline in the number of people sharing your particular preferences?
Having your bookstore open to the public is your choice if you're running a bookstore; no one is morally obligated to buy from you just because you've decided to structure your business in a way that invites browsing without buying.
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Morality is a matter of opinion. There's no objective measure for it, and you'll get at least as many opinions as you ask people.
There are legitimate reasons to object to "showrooming" for some retailers. In places like an electronics store, where people are shopping for expensive items they don't necessarily know much about, and are looking for help in choosing the right one, it's an expensive waste of time. The store pays the employees to spend time with people who have no intention of buying, and while helping those people, they can't help people who would buy if they could get some help. So there, I suspect, a lot of people would see it as somewhat unethical, and it is more common thant it used to be.
However, this does not describe the typical book store. People don't go to a book store to talk to the employees about what to buy, they go to browse
the books, and it costs the store nothing to have people wandering the aisles looking. At that point, charging a cover fee becomes unethical, IMO.
When your book store is failing, it isn't because people are coming in and not buying, it's because people are not buying. Giving potential customers incentives to not come in at all won't help. Finding out why they're not buying might. Convincing them to not come in at all will prevent you from finding out why they're not buying.
This whole idea is from someone who has clearly never worked in the trenches in retail.