At Waterstones the book shop recently I couldn't find a book I was looking for (It was Jeanette Winterson's autobiography "Why be happy when you could be normal" and it was to be a present) so seeing a computer terminal I looked it up and found it at £8.00 on a list on the web site. At the same time my son found the actual book in the store, but marked at £14.00. I went and enquired with the cheerful scandanavian guy on the till.
"Unfortunately if you buy it from the shop it is £14. £8 is the price if you buy it off the web site." there was a pause as I absorbed the information.
"We can order it for you and you can pick it up from here." He said smiling and before I could speak he said "Yes, I know it's mad."
"Can't I order it? - take this one and you can replace the book with the one ordered off your web site when it comes in?"
"Sorry - I know it seems mad but I can't do that."
What was happening was I was being channel shifted. The consequence was that I did actually shift my purchasing channel. I ordered it from Amazon for £7.
So the grass is greener on the other channel?
ReplyDeleteHow can they survive as a business like that ?
ReplyDeleteBut I wanted and was ready to buy a book from a shop. They're trying to get us to shift to cheaper channels. On line is cheap to run. But undermining their own stores in this way is mental. Their strength is on the high street. They will not successfully compete with Amazon.
ReplyDeleteActually Waterstones is pretty crap anyway - used to be good when it had one or two stores in Charing Cross Road but since it went on to the high street it's really dumbed down. Instead of philosophy books it has a section where twats and pillocks write books about, Taming your left brain by some bloke withou a neuro-science degree, or "Get Rich" with Paul Mckenna - "Eat Shit for health" by Gillian Mckeith -and "Become as one with your horse spirit" by Peter Andre or something.
Sorry that last comment turned into a bit of of a rant - and neglects punctuation or meaning.
ReplyDeleteor grammar
ReplyDelete