Book Shopping in Stores, Then Buying Online

Book Shopping in Stores, Then Buying Online
Now a survey has confirmed that the practice, known among booksellers as showrooming, is not a figment of their imaginations. According to the survey, conducted in October by the Codex Group, a book market research and consulting company, 24 percent of people who said they had bought books from an online retailer in the last month also said they had seen the book in a brick-and-mortar bookstore first.

December 5, 2011 by Uncategorized 5

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5 Responses

  1. Cyberpunk Librarian says:
    December 5, 2011 at 2:02 pm

    Guilty
    There have been plenty of times I’m in a B&N looking at stuff and come across something I really desire. It’s cover price, fine, but then I scan the barcode and hit up Amazon, using B&N’s wireless to do so, and find out that I can get it $7.00 cheaper.

    I mean, I’d like to buy it right now. But seven bucks is still quite a bit of cash to me, especially on a single item. The brick and mortar stores are going to have to start competing with websites, especially their own, when it comes to selling stuff at a decent price. There are times I could’ve bought something more cheaply from B&N’s website than I could from their store and that’s just stupid.

    Reply
  2. tom says:
    December 5, 2011 at 3:25 pm

    bn.com is killing B&N
    This happened earlier this year:
    We went into a local Barnes & Noble and found a book on the shelf at full retail price. I scanned the bar code with my phone to check prices at other retailers and saw that BN.com was discounting the book 40% AND if I wanted to pick the book at my local Barnes & Noble, I could order it online with the 40% off and pick it up in an hour.

    So the online retailer was undermining the local store by stealing a sale at a lower price that the local store wasn’t offering. Yes, they are the same company, but not as far as that sale is concerned. When layoffs come, the online division will look good while the local store looks like a dog.

    But ultimately, this is an Amazon problem because everyone is trying to make their online presence as attactive as Amazon’s with large discounts and free shipping, but places like B&N are still required to collect sales tax while Amazon is not. I’m wondering if eventually, nothing at the local “store” will be for sale, just show, and then B&N can claim no local sales presence and avoid collecting sales tax online.

    I always balance the wait + discount vs. the immediate need, and sometimes buy from the local store. Saving 30% for a book now beats saving 40% with a week wait for shipping. But in the case of those remaindered books that B&N often has for around $6.98, I buy those without any comparison shopping.

    Reply
  3. Bibliofuture says:
    December 5, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    Factor in ebooks
    Then you factor in ebooks and where are we?

    Take a look at this blog post:
    How many Christmases until we see a whole new industry?

    Excerpt: One bookstore owner I know has been doing a great job; the store held its own despite the overall slide in print. The bookseller told me that this year, through October, sales at the store were down 5%. Not bad. They were down 2% year-on-year last year. They were down 1% year-on-year in 2009. And they had a record year for sales in 2008.

    There’s a pattern there. The percentage reduction is doubling each year. When I said, “so you’ll be down 10% next year and 20% the year after that, right?” Bookseller said, “probably.”

    Almost no brick store can stand a sales loss of 20% and remain viable. Maybe one could make up the 20% by selling something else in addition to books. But maybe branching out into other lines of merchandise will cost more than it will generate.

    Maybe they won’t be able to hold even that 5% reduction through Christmas. And maybe the 20% we see as two years away is even closer.

    Reply
    • Anonymous says:
      December 5, 2011 at 4:58 pm

      Just books doesn’t work anymore
      The bookstore chain I work for actually made as much money in gift products last year as they did in books. It’s one of the reasons they are still profitable.

      Reply

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