What a quick way to kill your business..

[lotus503]

So lets have an exercise of actually coming up with a solution to the problem that doesn't tank the business.

I have an idea

Rather than charging for browsing post a different very visible sign.

this sign would outline not in any particular order

1. How many local jobs the store supports
2. A rough outline of the money to store puts back into the local community
3. Any other type of community support the store provides from little league type
sponsorship to handing out food on holidays.
4. Mission statement with a focus on the service and community aspect.
Pictures of the helpful staff.

I think simply pointing out the above would have a far broader impact over the long term that charging people to browse. Brick and Mortar stores have to emphasize service including community service and value.

This is a harder hill to climb for the home depot and best buys of the world but extremly effective for non chain brick and mortar.

 

[AstroManLuca]

So the issue is we have brick and mortar stores that cannot compete on price, and they have cost increases servicing folks that have no intention on buying from them. A problem for sure

The proposed solution offered in the OP is to charge people to look around and that somehow is going to solve the problem?

as fern somewhat pointed out that if the cost increases are so much that it erodes the margins to a point the business is unsustainable the business model itself has evolved out of relevancy.

BetsBuy itself is somewhat in trouble, becasue they cant for the most part compete on price and offer nothing esle really compelling to make up for that fact. See circuit city.

Whats proposed in the Op however does nothing to address the fundamental problem and likely will result in fast tracking the enevitable.

Agreed.

The two things that B&M stores have going for them - instant gratification and personalized service.

Problem is that people are only willing to pay so much extra to avoid waiting a few days, and that amount probably isn't enough to make up for the cost of doing business. As for personalized service, people basically expect that to be free. You can pay for it a la Geek Squad, but sometimes I wonder how many people really go for that.

 

[Fern]

After thinking about it a bit more this idea of charging to browse strikes me as even worse than I felt yesterday.

She's made no case whatsoever that browsers are costing her any money.

So, she estimates she has about 60 browsers a week. Well, what's the difference in her rent payment with 60 browsers versus no browsers? The answer is zero difference. Same with product on the shelves. Fixed costs do not increase by having browsers visit your store.

What it costs her is time. She could be sitting on her azz doing nothing, or she could interacting with browsers. But that costs her no money because she's going to be there anyway. (If she had said she had to hire an extra employee to take care of the browsers I'd agree, but that's not the case.)

To charge someone $5 to come in means, to me anyway, that I'm making a bet that there will be a product I want to buy. And I have to make that bet without even knowing what products she has at what price.

And judging by her remarks in the article and her decision to charge browsers, I'm willing to bet she's an unpleasant person. That's a very bad thing in a small retail store. It's basically an unpleasant customer service experience, and customer service is her only advantage over online and/or bigger stores.

Fern

 

[HendrixFan]

people buy shoes online? and clothes?

I buy my shoes and jeans and t shirts online. I buy the same brands and size, so I have already tried it on so to speak. To get the right fit I tried them on in person (and bought in person). From there I just visit that store's site and buy the same size.

 

[HendrixFan]

People use Best Buy and the like as showrooms for Amazon because they can, and it makes a ton of sense to. It is simply a smart business decision. As has been mentioned, if the cost was just a few dollars extra most customers would just buy on spot. The price difference is instead too drastic forcing the customer away.

If the overhead of running a store like Best Buy is too high to compete with the internet model then they are dead. Just like Circuit City and CompUSA before them. They should stop trying to prop up a corpse and completely re-do their business model or just throw in the towel now.

The future will be Samsung, Sony, etc opening up their own stores that you can use to browse their products. You already sort of see this now, especially in larger markets. Prices are almost always at retail, which is a surefire ripoff. But it services as a showroom for that company's product. Morons can pay retail there, the rest can find the deal of their choosing online.

Everyone wins.

Except Best Buy but they are dead anyway.

 

[Farang]

After thinking about it a bit more this idea of charging to browse strikes me as even worse than I felt yesterday.

She's made no case whatsoever that browsers are costing her any money.

So, she estimates she has about 60 browsers a week. Well, what's the difference in her rent payment with 60 browsers versus no browsers? The answer is zero difference. Same with product on the shelves. Fixed costs do not increase by having browsers visit your store.

What it costs her is time. She could be sitting on her azz doing nothing, or she could interacting with browsers. But that costs her no money because she's going to be there anyway. (If she had said she had to hire an extra employee to take care of the browsers I'd agree, but that's not the case.)

To charge someone $5 to come in means, to me anyway, that I'm making a bet that there will be a product I want to buy. And I have to make that bet without even knowing what products she has at what price.

And judging by her remarks in the article and her decision to charge browsers, I'm willing to bet she's an unpleasant person. That's a very bad thing in a small retail store. It's basically an unpleasant customer service experience, and customer service is her only advantage over online and/or bigger stores.

Fern

Don't know if you saw my reply but the example I cited was a used bookstore owner in a populated urban neighborhood. People do get value out of simply browsing around there, and even more because the lady herself is a book NUT. Like knows everything about every book.

So if she were to start charging, it might drive away a lot of people. But anyone who liked books and made a habit of browsing bookstores would be inclined to do something (whether that be paying, registering, or something else) so that the best used bookstore they had down the street was accessible to them.

I think a book lover and Amazon Prime member might be inclined to pay a bit to have that kind of local resource. How that applies to other markets I couldn't say.

 

[werepossum]

The customers in question aren't very nice people.

I think that if I ran a shop for my business and kept having the above problem, I would have a politely-worded sign in the window saying something along the lines of "We aim to provide the best advice and general customer service. If you are only coming here for advice, please at least provide a donation to ensure that we can still run a business and you can continue to get advice you can trust when you need it".

These businesses aren't run by very nice people.

In recent years, I personally have only encountered one shop selling technology with customer advice that I would recommend without hesitation. Most big-name shops in my experience employ people who are capable of reading the information which is also written next to the product's price tag. I certainly would not pay if I thought there was a possibility that I would receive the latter type of service.

I think certainly one big reason for the decline in popularity of shops is poor customer service. In the last few years, my wife was looking for a cheap mp3 player, and because she had particular requirements we physically went shopping for one (because you can only tell so much by looking at specs and pictures), with the intention of buying an item that we had tried out from the shop which provided such service. IIRC, the first shop we went into is a big name in the UK, PC World. They had a row of mp3 players, but they were all in anti-theft security containers (not the original boxes, but large perspex containers) and switched off.

We asked if we could try out one of them. No, they cannot be removed from the security container. Did they know anything about the product they were trying to sell? No. Needless to say we went elsewhere.

These are good points. Too often a salesman has merely been annoying me with half-informed prattle, but probably believes he is dispensing valuable advice. Potential customers who visit her store may well be ass hats using her resources for free, but they may also simply find her resources to not be worthy of patronage.

Um, I think most retailers would be happy to take that deal. The entire point of the thread is that too many consumers don't live up to their end of the bargain -- they consume services from retail stores that need higher prices to pay for those services, and then buy from Amazon anyway.



And if someone feels that way, then great -- they should stay away from Best Buy.

But most of them don't. They go into Best Buy, they look at all the devices, they pick them up to see how heavy they feel, they try out the keyboard or other controls -- and then they buy the item on Amazon and rationalize after the fact that Best Buy "didn't provide them any significant services".

I certainly agree that such customers are a problem, but Mikeymikec makes a valid point that it is not necessarily just the customers. Some portion of her problem may well be not dishonest customers but an unrealistic evaluation of what she brings to the table. I'm sure those retailers who do not allow you any meaningful interaction with the goods are also complaining about unfair competition from etailers even though they are providing less value than the etailers at substantially higher prices.

 

[Oldgamer]

People use Best Buy and the like as showrooms for Amazon because they can, and it makes a ton of sense to. It is simply a smart business decision. As has been mentioned, if the cost was just a few dollars extra most customers would just buy on spot. The price difference is instead too drastic forcing the customer away.

If the overhead of running a store like Best Buy is too high to compete with the internet model then they are dead. Just like Circuit City and CompUSA before them. They should stop trying to prop up a corpse and completely re-do their business model or just throw in the towel now.

The future will be Samsung, Sony, etc opening up their own stores that you can use to browse their products. You already sort of see this now, especially in larger markets. Prices are almost always at retail, which is a surefire ripoff. But it services as a showroom for that company's product. Morons can pay retail there, the rest can find the deal of their choosing online.

Everyone wins.

Except Best Buy but they are dead anyway.

This is interesting reading all this, it sort of reminds me of the movie "40 year old virgin" where the lady displayed her wares in the store, for viewing, but the customer had to buy the actual product on line.

 

[Bock]

Her business will be fine but she could have handled it better.

1.She sells Celiac supplies for gluten free and seems to have specialized knowledge of the matter.
2. Her prices are the same as the big supermarkets & maybe she should advertise that more prominently.
3. It's in Australia. They are already charge people for trying on shoes/clothes.

 

[Thump553]

Since when has a progressive ever cared about killing businesses?

Maybe we should raise taxes on internet business to fix it?
Then we can tax the business for health care.
Then we can tax the business with an energy tax.
Does the business have handicapped access? Tax it.
What was the question again? It doesn't really matter because the Democrat answer is to tax it.

Simple solution-let states that charge sales tax collect it on internet sales. This would level the playing the field between us mom and pop stores and the internet. It may have made sense 20 years ago to exempt internet sales because internet business was in it's infancy but those days are long, long gone.

Back on track, what surprised me most about this story was that it was a (specialty) food store. Gadget or clothing store I could see this model working, maybe, but not food. OTOH this may be just a stunt to get some free publicity and the charge will soon be dropped.

 

[rudder]

I guess this is why the internet sales tax is being pushed so hard. Here in Tennessee we pay a ~9.75% sales tax... so on a big ticket item it could make a difference.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I have no problem with a store charging people to come and take a look at their merchandise. It's their store, they can do what they want. I probably wouldn't shop there though.

 

[Fern]

Discussion of US sales tax rules on internet purchases is irrelevant. That is about doing business in the US, this woman and her store are in Australia.

Fern

 

[Joepublic2]

meh, the local junk yard does it. They charge $1 just to come in and then you have to go out into the lot with your tools to remove whatever parts you need from the thousands of junked cars. Then you pay for the parts on your way out.

To be fair this is also to cover the costs of people stealing shit which is very easy to do at a scrap yard. 2$ here, just to cover little things that people "forgot" they put into their pockets like tail light bulbs, cig lighters etc.

 

[Joepublic2]

This does remind me of BS come on deals where somebody rents a building, fills a couple of shelves with a few dozen antiquated laptops/mp3 players/stereos then advertises on late night TV to get all the stoned/drunk people excited, thinking they'll get a good deal and it's only 10$ to get in.