Amazon.com, Zulilly, and others are drinking the milkshakes of most brick and mortar stores. They have already driven some long time names to the brink, and closed others. However, the suits that run these stores don’t understand why people are constantly going online.
- The Experience
In most cases, people don’t like to be harassed by employees trying to make a sale. This is why Best Buy basically destroyed all of its competitors in the electronics space. But they also enjoy knowing where there is someone who can help, and having the lower shelfs at Best Buy, makes it easier to locate people that can theoretically help. It is similar to people’s experiences online. They can search for what they think they need, given a few non-intrusive suggestions, but can easily chat with an expert to find what they are looking for. - The Sales
For some reason, people are easily tricked by “sales”. Even though, 90% of the time, the “sale” price is the regular price, as JC Penney experimented with and found that the psychology of sales is just too powerful. Amazon does something similar, as their prices are often “sale” prices. Dell does this as well. The only online retailer that doesn’t resort to this chicanery is Apple, but they are a unique player in both the online and physical retail space. - The Space
Most of the more successful online retailers have very clean an modern websites. The same can be said for successful physical stores. Apple and Nortstrom both keep their store free of clutter, and keep most of their inventory behind closed doors. Whereas Macy’s, JC Penny, Sears, and Walmart seem to put 10 gallons of inventory in a 5 gallon store. They are all cluttered and difficult to navigate, especially for the typical American. My local Walmart is so bad that they have pallets of inventory in the middle of the main walkways and interfering with access to the check stands. Retailers, if they wish to survive need to cut back on putting excessive inventory on the floor, and focus on making the experience better. - Self Checkout
Regardless of your opinion on Self-Checkout, you can certainly agree that being able to, as the puppet Walter says “get your shit, and get out”, is refreshing. Not having to wait in line, as a cashier slowly scans every item, then struggles to either deactivate the inventory tags, or remove them, then tries to sell the customer on their store credit card. Younger people and savvy shoppers just want to take and go. Stores like AmazonGo and the Apple Store make it easy for you to get your items and either automatically pay as you leave, or pay via your phones. Many self-check systems are no better, requiring the customer to perform the same actions that the cashier would perform, but not being skilled, it takes longer. Adopting AmazonGo or Apple like systems as an option in most stores, would be quite helpful and make the shopping experience much better. - Bottom Line
In the end, most of these existing retailers won’t heed these lessons, and will die, only for others to come back in their place, although, history may already be repeating itself, as Sears started as a catalog service, only to open retail stores; Amazon is starting to open retail stores of their own. It is a strange world in which we life.