David Nicholls: Browsing bookshops then buying online is a 'genteel form of shoplifti

[cadele]

What about the reverse? Perusing books and reviews online and then proceeding to buy the physical book from a bookstore... Is that wrong too?

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by thewitt

If you are using my physical inventory, my retail space and my employees to decide whether you are going to buy an eBook from Amazon, then yes it relates perfectly.

Your physical inventory is there because you're trying to sell it and make money, it's not there because customers need to use it. Your space is there because you need a place to put your inventory and your sales people are there to take money from customers.
Dont flip this around like you are there because customers need you. No, you need the customers.

When you don't buy from me, I don't make any money. If I don't make any money, there is no capital to buy inventory, no cash to pay my rental, insurance and utility bills, and no cash to pay my employees.

Sad day, but that's how businesses work. Answer to that is make yourself more competitive, have a unique thing nobody else is offering.

The result is..... yes you guessed it. I go out of business, and you lose the ability to walk into my bookstore to check out books before you make your purchase online.

Rare are the places where there's only one bookstore.

Think of how YOU would react to this as the bookstore owner.
Would you open your doors wide to everyone who wants to come in and paw your books, only to have them all buy from an online retailer instead?

Paw???? Dude have you heard of browsing or what??
With that kind of attitude of course the negativity is felt by customers if you're eyeing them up and watching their every move when they browse, excuse me I mean "paw" your books.
And yes I would open my store to everyone and I'd be super nice about it, because I think every person who enters my store can become a customer. If they had a positive experience in the store with friendly atmosphere and prices to match amazon or any other online shop people would come back and shop.

How many millions in inventory do you think lines the shelves of a typical Books-a-million retail store?

How is that relevant to this?

If customers don't buy from retail stores, retails stores go away.

No, the correct line of thinking is: if retail stores are not competitive, retail stores go away. As they should.

[thewitt]

You are certainly welcome to your opinion, however if you think you will survive as a business if your model is everyone who comes in the door browses your inventory and then buys online, you need to think again.

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by thewitt

You are certainly welcome to your opinion, however if you think you will survive as a business if your model is everyone who comes in the door browses your inventory and then buys online, you need to think again.

I think you have this all upside down.
Anyone can buy online, and anyone can enter your shop. It's your job to convince them that you're better than the other guy.
If you get defensive before you even start to fight you WILL lose.

[thewitt]

Maybe you have lost focus on this thread.

The question was is it ethical to use a bookstore as your research facility for the book you buy online.

The question is not how to run a successful retail business.

The discussion all about NOT spending any money at the retailer, just USING his resources to help you make a decision what you are going to buy from SOMEONE ELSE.

I'm not defensive. I ran an extremely successful retail business for many years, and if I were to go back into it, I guarantee you it would be successful again.

You cannot stay in business however if no one buys from you - which is the premise of this thread.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by Geralt

If they had a positive experience in the store with friendly atmosphere and prices to match amazon or any other online shop people would come back and shop.

How can their prices possibly match Amazon, when it's a bookstore and you are strictly shopping for ebooks? Sure you want to enjoy the friendly atmosphere, but you don't expect that you can walk into a restaurant just to sit at a table, enjoy the view and rest for a while, or discuss the merits of different wines with the waiter?

[TechniSol]

The real question here should be: "Is it ethical for someone that we grant some standing based on their relationship(author) to an industry(book selling) to make a case so nonsensical that others waste time debating the ethics of it?" ;-)

There is no understood contract, written, unwritten, assumed, scribed in goat's or other's blood, etc., that anyone who walks into a book shop or any shop is in any way obligated to buy anything. If you waste someone's time at some point they will make the decision to either inform you or make themselves unavailable for continued torture. Such is the nature of retail, and everyone has their breaking point and level of acceptable time wasted on someone who is obviously tire kicking. Frankly, if you've nothing better to do, it can sometimes at least provide the opportunity for entertainment.

What we're seeing is a paradigm shift in commerce, and trying to fix it by attempting to shame the consumer, even with the best of intentions is not the solution... So long as one is free to enter an establishment and browse, avail themselves of assistance and leave without spending a dime there is NOTHING unethical about doing so. There is no social contract involved, though a retailer might certainly like you to feel that way.

One of the basic tenants of sales since time immemorial has been the concept of "put it in their hands and it becomes real, not merely an object of desire -but now an object that can be acquired immediately." That's why B&M with stock and inventory exists, so that the customer will not pass up an opportunity to acquire it NOW -that and because if you don't have it and the competition does you've lost a sale. You usually can't sell what you don't have, unless the customer can wait and you can provide it at a better price than the alternative vendor(s) -unless you're a really good salesperson and the customer is confident you can offer service that no one else can or will. It also depends on how much time they've spent evaluating and whether they are the point where they can be persuaded to pull the trigger. You can't sell anything to anyone who cannot be moved to that point.

The paradigm shift is the offering of the same or similar products with a short enough wait time to make the customer consider the cost differential vs. the added wait time to acquire the object of their desire. With overnight, two day shipping, and extremely cheap three day services the paradigm shift has become a reality. Even more so with the availability of nearly instantaneous electronic delivery.

Part of what I do involves the selling of equipment & services to the general public. We provide free on-site quoting services and I do intimately understand the notion of having one's time wasted, but until "the competition" starts charging for those services we apparently won't be either. We face the same conundrum with online services and do-it-yourself systems, etc. While I can understand intimately how people might feel the ethics involved, until we implement a policy of charging for an evaluation and quote based on it, we can't really take the stance that anyone is doing anything wrong, but we do feel the sting on a personal basis as we are commission only and incur the cost of the wasted time and gas.

In my mind, at least a partial fix is to "qualify out" those who will never buy based on even the most basic offering being beyond what they are willing to pay, but it is not my call policy-wise and may only be my call should I decide to move on. Management, of course, feels the opportunity of being able to convince someone outweighs the risk. They, of course, are not paying the freight for those who have no intention of buying, or at least buying from us, and hope only to receive free guidance or whatever.

So, despite my intimate connection with this sort of thing, I still cannot in good conscience say that these people have any obligation to buy anything so long as we choose to offer a free evaluation and in-home quote. Would I prefer they do? You betcha, but that is the way the cookie crumbles.

Frankly, were I granted a wish, beyond the Midas touch of closing every opportunity, I'd just be happy that if people are shopping around that they inquire about price up front and save us the wasted time if there is no way they are going to do business with us based on our minimum price. This might be equated with refusing assistance if you've no intention of buying in a retail environment -one might consider it common courtesy not to waste another's time. Though, I am forced to observe that there is, in fact, nothing so common about courtesy -a stance I have concluded has likely ever been so, but simply made more obvious the longer one observes. As a company, we are always going to be more expensive than alternatives that are self-installed because we are value added integrators who provide a turnkey solution and before and after services and support.

Cheers to anyone who got this far, for this was a long one! ;-)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

How can their prices possibly match Amazon, when it's a bookstore and you are strictly shopping for ebooks? Sure you want to enjoy the friendly atmosphere, but you don't expect that you can walk into a restaurant just to sit at a table, enjoy the view and rest for a while, or discuss the merits of different wines with the waiter?

Precisely. This is exactly my argument, too.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by thewitt

I get it.

You guys who do this don't consider it unethical, and guys like me won't change your mind.

I don't think you do get it. It's not a "you guys who do this don't consider it unethical situation. I don't do it. Not because I think it's unethical (I still don't), but because going to a store to lay hands on a book I'm going to go buy online anyway is inconvenient as hell and a waste of my time. There's nothing special I can learn about a book by picking it up in a store that I can't learn about it online. So in addition to not thinking it's unethical, I believe it to be a ridiculously trivial small number of people who "do this" with books.

For every "true" showcaser out there, I believe there's probably several people who do it "in reverse" in the manner described by twowheels (scanning the barcode to check online prices/reviews and buying instore anyway if the price difference isn't huge). But of course no one thinks that's unethical (and rightfully so).

For all but the rare situations (perhaps golf-club fitting), I think the idea that showcasers are contributing (in any appreciable way) to the demise of B&M stores is laughable. People willing to inconvenience themselves enough by going to a B&M store to lay hands on something before going back home to order it online were NEVER going to buy anything from you in the first place.

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by thewitt

You cannot stay in business however if no one buys from you - which is the premise of this thread.

The premise of this thread is stupid.
It looks at customers as thieves. The reason why you can't stay in business is because you're not competitive, not because potential customers are out to get you.

You can't in all honesty argue that the reason why the bookshops are losing business is because people in drones go inside the shop to waste employees time and than buy online.

Most of the people go so they can browse, see what's new and maybe buy something. They don't have an agenda to break your business.

Maybe it's more of this phenomenon that's to blame:

The Pew Research Center reported last week that nearly a quarter of American adults had not read a single book in the past year. As in, they hadn't cracked a paperback, fired up a Kindle, or even hit play on an audiobook while in the car. The number of non-book-readers has nearly tripled since 1978.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...-lover/283222/

[Geralt]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

How can their prices possibly match Amazon, when it's a bookstore and you are strictly shopping for ebooks? Sure you want to enjoy the friendly atmosphere, but you don't expect that you can walk into a restaurant just to sit at a table, enjoy the view and rest for a while, or discuss the merits of different wines with the waiter?

Who said you are strictly shopping for ebooks???
Bookstores and restaurants cant really compare. As you said, you cant go inside a restaurant to browse around. You can go inside a bookstore to browse.
Two different business models, you can't compare. Or you can, but it just isn't very convincing.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Oh I know.
I was just getting a kick out of the idea (and riffing a bit on it) that a good salesperson can take someone's supposedly unethical intent and turn it into a sale. Just wondering, in that case, if the (non)customer actually becomes ethical at the point of sale (due entirely to the salesperson's powers of persuasion)? Or would the sale make the customer's still-unethical-intent just not matter any more?

Yes the customer now becomes ethical, obviously however, the salesperson is now unethical for forcing the browser customer to make a purchase when they had no intention to .

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Geralt

Who said you are strictly shopping for ebooks???
Bookstores and restaurants cant really compare. As you said, you cant go inside a restaurant to browse around. You can go inside a bookstore to browse.
Two different business models, you can't compare. Or you can, but it just isn't very convincing.

Customer browsing has always been part of book selling. And accomodating that is part of the cost of doing business.
A good part of the success of the chain stores back in their day was due precisely to their openness to browsing and the accomodations they provided.

In more recent times, Amazon has prospered because *they* make browsing even more convenient and efficient online. Especially by eliminating the prospect of going to the trouble of a long drive to a B&M site only to find nothing worth buying.

The plain fact is anybody willing to buy online is already aware that B&M "cannot possibly" compete with Amazon in catalog size and price (the ADSers repeat it constantly and loudly enough). The only people who actually bother to enter a bookstore these days are the ones interested in buying *local* in the first place. They are giving them first crack at their business.
If they walk out emptyhanded it isn't because of any ethical failing on their behalf but rather because the bookstore failed to close the deal. The failure is on them, not on the customer. Because anybody who had no interest in buying wouldn't waste lifespan in a bookstore.

The crucial misunderstanding here is the myth that B&M browsing is somehow magically better and more efficient than online browsing.

News alert, Mr Nicholls: it isn't.

The only thing B&M book selling is better at is forcing customers to walk past tables of payola-supported titles. And that by itself is reason enough to go shop online, where the store operator is focused on helping the shopper find the book they want instead of making them buy the books they're bring paid to promote.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Geralt

Golf club example is not really related to books. Who needs to be "fitted" for a book anyway? Who needs some kind of expertise to buy a book?
Just doesn't correlate.

Nearly all people I would say. People at this forum are people that read a lot of books and read about books so they do not need expert help. Other will need it if they want to optimize the selection process.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by Geralt

Who said you are strictly shopping for ebooks???

I thought this was what this discussion is about?