But you see how this is a one-way relationship between them and Amazon, right? Even if they match the price of Amazon, they are on the losing end-of-the-stick because:
1) They have to pay the expenses for physically hosting that product
2) They may also have to collect state tax
So what they get out this relationship is that the customer uses store resources to investigate a product, and then either a) goes home and orders the product or b) buys the product at the store out of instant gratification.
Amazon either wins big in case a), or in b) incurs the slight cost of hosting the online resources that allowed you to do that research. The store obviously loses big in case a) and it still might lose in case b, if the product was priced so low as to be a loss-leader but you ended up not buying anything else.
Not saying what you're doing is wrong or bad. Just pointing out that the store is kind of against the brick wall, so to speak.
Perhaps the future for retailers is to adopt a gas station model: depend on Amazon to do the supplying, and make money off of something totally unrelated, just as gas stations make more profit off of a cup of coffee than they do for a full tank of gas.
1) They have to pay the expenses for physically hosting that product 2) They may also have to collect state tax
So what they get out this relationship is that the customer uses store resources to investigate a product, and then either a) goes home and orders the product or b) buys the product at the store out of instant gratification.
Amazon either wins big in case a), or in b) incurs the slight cost of hosting the online resources that allowed you to do that research. The store obviously loses big in case a) and it still might lose in case b, if the product was priced so low as to be a loss-leader but you ended up not buying anything else.
Not saying what you're doing is wrong or bad. Just pointing out that the store is kind of against the brick wall, so to speak.
Perhaps the future for retailers is to adopt a gas station model: depend on Amazon to do the supplying, and make money off of something totally unrelated, just as gas stations make more profit off of a cup of coffee than they do for a full tank of gas.