Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
And "if B&M is to have a future", as you put it, I think it does indeed lie down the path of being a doorway to this online world, plus possibly some particular retailers where a physical presence is really an advantage. A home handyman needing a hammer on a Sunday morning or someone baking a cake who runs out of flour will probably always want to drive to the local store to get it now. Some products may require retail premises by way of a showroom where people can inspect and try out the physical products.
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Pharmacies and convenience stores/gas station shops seem to do fine despite objectively (but not objectionable) high pricing. I've seen some of the gas stations adding home repair tools in addition to the expected auto tools. A lot of that is maximizing the take from the traffic you get. Covenience and timeliness factor into the buy-no buy, buy here or order online and wait, decisions. It doesn't always favor online.
Likewise, higher pricing per-se isn't offensive as long as it stays within range of the sweet spot. We see a lot of this with Indie books where proper pricing (or price jogging) can be very profitable. The sweet spot globally is known to be around $4 but it varies by genre and by author. Romance typically clusters around $3, SF around $5. Variance of a buck or so from the genre baseline isn't necessarily a dealbreaker if the author has a track record with the buyer.
Which is one reason for the toys and trinkets Indigo/Chapters has done so well with (reportedly) and B&N not quite as well. On the latter end, I recently saw a comment to chew on re: store layouts. I saw a comment by a parent saying she and many she knew now actively avoided B&N while shopping for kids books because of "the toy gauntlet", having to drag the kids past all the pricey, "enticing" toys they aren't going to get, in order to even look at the books.
Valid point.
Toys and kids books might seem like a good fit...during the xmas season. The rest of the year?
Directing traffic through B&M stores is an art; it can be a plus or a minus.
Online it's "simpler": just minimize the steps needed to find any specific item, either through indexed categories, search, or both. (Not that doing either right is trivial, as Walmart, Rakuten, and B&N.com prove. Haven't heard great things about Kobo's search, either.)
Like so many commercial activities, there are way more ways to get things wrong than there are of getting things right.