High-Street Blues

[andrewducker]

I was reading Charlie Stross' post on the impending collapse of the doomed High Street and it reminded me of the ridiculous situation I had buying a PS3 controller just before Christmas.

I wanted a new one, because we only have one, and Little Big Planet looks like it will be fun two-player. So I looked around, discovered that they were £50 in-store in Game, £45 in Amazon, but only £40 in the Game online store. A bit silly, I thought, having to buy it online from the same company, but I ordered it from Game and discovered that they would deliver it to the local store for me. Fantastic, I thought - I can order online and then just drop in and pick it up!

Except that it really _was_ a delivery service, where you have to wait for them to post out a controller to your local shop that's exactly the same as the ones that are already in-store, and then go in and queue along with everyone else, and then the harrassed staff go and root through the back room until they find the parcel that was sent through. Pretty much the opposite of joined-up thinking.

Today, of course, Amazon has it for £5 cheaper than that again, at only £35. And Julie's been ill since she got back, so we haven't actually managed to use it yet anyway.

There's a lesson there somewhere, but I can't quite work out what it is...

Comments

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Huh.. Best Buy (electronics) and Staples (office supplies), fire example, a) do in-store pickup properly, and b) price-match their competition--including their own website, if it doesn't match.

[andrewducker]

It did strike me as particularly awful service.

Re:

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Games Workshop do this too, but they explicitly don't stock everything instore - a lot of things are mail order only and can be sent for free to a store of your choice. However, in their case, they're pretty open that the idea is to get you in the shop and sell you things or get you involved in The Hobby Experience (practically TM).

Of course, GW's weird business model is to charge more than other people selling their product online. (no, really - the online stores that sell GW products are able to sell them for the same price or less than GW's because they get them at what apparently is a good discount. There are very odd T&Cs for sellers though, at least in the US. Though I guess this might have changed since I last read about it)

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I don't know about LBP, but LBP2 is a lot of fun with two players. :)

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and about what services physical shopping can offer that virtual shopping can't.

(Extreme TLDR: demonstration, tactility, senses other than hearing and sight, 3D, recommendation, learning modes, scale).

I'll try to write the post in the next few days!

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

IME in-store orders are only an improvement in bother terms over an online order if getting parcels delivered to your home is a major hassle.

The one thing I do currently buy that way is specs - Tesco Opticians are handy for me to drop by, and at £10 a pop they're cheaper than any online provider I've found.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, I got it done because Julie was away, and Game was closer than the parcel depot.

Re:

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I like the walk to the parcel depot but am trying to shop online less because fewer and fewer companies use Royal Mail, which is the one company that will actually use the parcel depot. Even Amazon don't always use the royal mail any more.

A company that can only deliver 9-5 weekdays is no use to me, since I'm at work at that point. Allowing me to change my delivery date to.... another weekday... is no help, and since I don't have a car and work during the week, I can't get to most of the courier company offices either to pick up stuff. While Yodel (the company that used to be Home Delivery Network) are terrible, at least they now deliver in the evenings when I can be in to get stuff.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Argos rules the world! I buy most of my stuff there now.

[andrewducker]

Believe it or not _they_ were also £10 more expensive in the run-up to Christmas! Gah!

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I'd assume that the prices of console controllers rise a little just before and after christmas in many stores since they'll be a last minute OMG we need this for that new game or someone will be upset kind of purchase that can't be skipped.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

This; Argos tell you exactly what is in stock at your local store right now, and you can reserve it for pick up. Just about precisely what you'd want a local service to look like.

It's not always quite as cheap as online retailers of course; but in exchange you can often get it Right Now.

I also like CEX; no reservations, but you can still see exactly what the local shop has in stock, it sells second hand goods (aka Awesome Planet Saving Win) and CEX is one of the closest shops to my house.

[andrewducker]

CEX! I _knew_ I was missing something!

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

They also give you a stock checker for three closest stores which I find extremely handy! I often buy my console game new releases there as I reckon half the year they have a 20% off all games promotion.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about what high street stores could do to survive... people (including me) do still browse occasionally, it's just that sometimes (usually) I think "OK, I want that, I'll pop home and order it on amazon, that way, it costs less and I don't have to carry it."

I wonder if (say) a bookshop would make more or less money if it offered a hole-in-the-wall where you pop the book, get the barcode scanned, log in to amazon and order right there. They get a referral fee from amazon, you get your real-life browsing experience and the cheap deal.

Do lost physical sales balance it? It maybe just me (or a small number of people) that browses physical stores but almost always decides to buy later.

Browsing on amazon is a bit hopeless... there's no serendipity to it... it just dumbly presents you with a list of best-sellers or "like you already bought".

[andrewducker]

As more and more people move to smartphones, which have said scanner/orderer built in, as part of the Amazon app that hole in the wall is going to look pretty outdated...

I really like Amazon's recommendations. If nothing else the "People who liked this also bought..." items have some very amusing suggestions from time to time.

[steer.livejournal.com]

You are perhaps right that people could do it now but they do not... my phone can do all that albeit clunkily right now.... but perhaps the difference is not enough to make me switch.

Amazon'sn recommendations are great but for me they get stuck in a rut. I read a fair bit, buy more than i read and all through amazon. Its recommendations are excellent if i never want to think something i have not thought already. :-)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

It always annoys me that if I'm in town and hear a song I like in a physical music store, I can't get it on my mp3 player right then. I would happily pay for this convenience.

[andrewducker]

I'm fairly sure that Julie's bought actual CDs in Urban Outfitters because she liked what they were playing in the shop. Nobody does MP3s like that though, and you're right, it's a shame.

[steer.livejournal.com]

On android the TrackId app does this. It samples the music, matches the track and gives you a link to buy it. Probably an iphone app to do the same. Of course this does rely on you using your phone as an mp3 player which i do not.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Both your article and Mr Stross' really got me thinking, because I enjoy shopping but hate not finding what I want.

I used to buy a lot online, although this was back when I was 19 and what I bought consisted mainly of DVDs, CDs and games. Now, I'm more likely to find myself buying something because I've wandered into town and remembered that 'the item I want' is finally out.

Most of this has been down to the abysmal service that delivery companies currently offer. Having stayed in three locations across Edinburgh (pretty widely spaced) I've found that the only guaranteed method for actually getting something on the day you expect is to have it delivered to your place of work. Indeed I suspected that the fact that I used to work at The Scotsman did mean that a lot of delivery times were kept by the fact that they were a well known (and vocal) company.

One of the things that I really started to try and remember, is how much of my life has changed in the last 10 or 20 years. It's the thing that's stopping me being too worried about the future if remembering that back in 2002 this was the future.

[steer.livejournal.com]

(Sigh) Just had a massive "bricks and mortar" fail -- walked the length of Tottenham Court Road, probably the most concentrated group of tech shops in the country (if not Europe) to get a motherboard. Was willing to pay £20 over online price to have it today. Came back empty handed.

[andrewducker]

Good Lord. The enthusiast market really is dying.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Any kind of "enthusiast" market surely has the problem that often the sheer range of products available means that an informed customer base will rarely be happy with the stock in your brick and mortar store. If I'm keen on making scale models, it's likely I'll want very specific things, so if I go into a store and they have the Academy Sd.Kfz 251, but not the Zvezda one, I won't want to buy an alternative because I want a very specific thing.

A brick and mortar store is fine for browsing, but if your customers are likely to want very specific things, you either need to have a huge range (expensive to have the space for this, and to keep all of it in stock) or else be an online store.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Part of the lesson is 'don't buy anything for yourself *before* Christmas', but you already knew that. The exception is things you know you're going to want to do before the shops open again -- which this might count as because you didn't know you'd be ill.