Comments on: Reclaiming Brick and Mortar http://blog.evernote.com/opportunitynotes/2012/11/02/reclaiming-brick-and-mortar/ By Rafe Needleman Tue, 14 May 2013 18:31:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: tbetz http://blog.evernote.com/opportunitynotes/2012/11/02/reclaiming-brick-and-mortar/#comment-146 tbetz Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:49:00 +0000 http://blog.evernote.com/opportunitynotes/?p=457#comment-146 Too bad it’s IOS-only.

]]> By: roschler http://blog.evernote.com/opportunitynotes/2012/11/02/reclaiming-brick-and-mortar/#comment-145 roschler Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:01:00 +0000 http://blog.evernote.com/opportunitynotes/?p=457#comment-145 I wonder if any stores have just gone the other direction and put in-store Web terminals on every isle that look up the item on Amazon for the customer, like the price or stock check terminals some stores have. The terminal would have a big banner next to it that says Check Amazon’s price, and then allows the user to complete the purchase right there on the store’s embedded terminal. At least they could earn an affiliate commission by signing up for an Amazon affiliate account. If they were smart, they would create their own Web store front that uses the Amazon API. Then when a user does this, right before they add the item to the user’s Amazon cart for them, they could point out the store’s superior warranty policy, shipping charges saved (if the user is not Amazon prime), extra discounts or perks the user will lose if they ship at Amazon, etc. They could also use this as an opportunity to up-sell/cross-sell the user on impulse buys that Amazon does not carry.

At the very least they get a ton of information about the user’s shopping habits, and as you say, get information on item sales that they lost to Amazon (but at least got an affiliate commission on). They could even adjust their inventories to eliminate the items that Amazon snatches from them. However, that final tactic could backfire if those items are really “loss-leaders” that generate other business. They might even find out that for some low-margin items, it’s worth it just to keep a few shelf items in the store just to get the Amazon commission and up-sell/cross-sell sales!

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