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Amazon to Open Hundreds of Physical Book Stores!


Troy

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The Wall Street Journal article is behind a paywall. However, it appears the article has been OCR'ed and converted to an audio file on Youtube.

The crazy thing is thing is that the prices will be the same as they are on the Amazon website!  How can they do it? Thank Wall Street.

I wonder if they will have cafes and provide free WiFi like other so called bookstores?

Will the employee just be low-level cashiers or knowledge sales people?

I think Barnes and Noble can pretty much say goodnight   The stick price is down 7% on this news, Nooks sales are down 25%, stores sales are down.  You know I have to remove my Barnes and Noble buy links from this website because they killed their affiliate program for the 3 or 4th time since I've been running this site!  

 

 

 

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I actually wrote about the first store opening on my blog here: http://www.cbpublish.com/business-why-the-amazon-bookstore-helps-legitimize-their-imprints/

I guess I have a deeper perspective on all of the Amazon action because that is where I make my living. Did you also know that Amazon purchased planes and a fleet of trucks to develop their own shipping service ala Fed Ex? 

What's crazier is a couple of weeks ago Fed Ex's software guys began updating their software to interact with the Amazon Marketplace and Amazon literally removed them as an option for shipping on the marketplace for over a week. This meant that the marketplace stores could only choose UPS or USPS. I spoke to one of the software guys and he said they aren't worried about Amazon and this shipping thing... but why wouldn't they worry?

Like I said in my post, it's very disturbing the control Amazon has on the buyer. I literally have shoes on my website at a cheaper price than I do on my Amazon store and people will buy from Amazon almost all of the time.  It's all about convenience. I talked about it on this video: 

 

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I discovered several years ago that Amazon does not always have the best prices.  I wanted to buy a replacement filter from my coffee machine and I went to Amazon the price was over $50 for 1 filter.  I thought that price was outrageous, O si searched from the product online and I found a website selling two filters for $25 dollars.  From that day to this I never buy anything on Amazon with checking the web first.  I usually find lower prices on the web.

I have been look for a new pair of shoes recently.  I checked Amazon and various websites.  As a result I'm inundated with shoe advertisements as I browse the web.  I popped into my local DSW store and found exactly what I wanted on the discount rack for 30 bucks a full $100 less that the online prices I was seeing for comparable shoes.

If Amazon puts DSW, or other physical shoe stores, out of business because people are too lazy to go to the store, do we think we ultimately end up with better prices?

Amazon has deluded people into believing that; (1) they have the best prices; (2) that they are actually comparison shopping when using market place; (3) that every retailer is on Amazon; and (4) that getting a product immediately is always better.

 

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I agree 100 Percent, but I took a few days to set up my online store and then doubled that work by placing all inventory on Square and then pasting the html code into my site so people could buy from me. I put the same shoes on Amazon and the only sell I've gotten through my site was from someone on Facebook going straight to the site. I've had my own shoe line on my site always and without fail, people only try them because they are on Amazon. I'm telling you it's all about convenience and that one click without taking your wallet out. 

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I hear you Chris.  Aside from books (which I no longer physically handle), the products I sell are intangible (advertising and services) and not available for purchase via Amazon, so my situation is different. But I can't help but wonder if Amazon sold my advertising would I sell more. 

The person who develops the software that displays my ad is working on a way to allow advertisers to buy and place ads directly, they way one might buy an ad on Facebook or Google. I hope to have this rolled out when I officially re-launch the website.

BTW the are a lot of people who are very happy about the new Amazon stores.

 

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1 hour ago, Troy said:

the products I sell are intangible (advertising and services) and not available for purchase via Amazon,

Have you checked out Amazon Professional Services?  Heh heh heh...;)  Actually if you chose for your services to be available Amazon has a deal for you right here...

Edited by Mel Hopkins
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Now this is really interesting. Now there are already plenty of sites that provide these referral services for each industry and more broadly, like Angie's List.  

It will be interesting to see if the Amazon brand is able to compete against all of these companies.

If Amazon is successful this will be yet another step more control of the WWW going to a handful of companies.  

 

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Sure it is a referral service, it is just that Amazon is controlling the money.  If they are successful contractors will make less money and become dependent upon Amazon for business.

Recently Uber and Lyft decided to cut prices for their glorified taxi referral service in New York City and other major cities, launching protests.  Meanwhile regular cabbies and car services make less while Uber and Lyft get rich.  

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