Re: Online Shopping Discrimination?
Not the best example. There has always been regional store pricing - if for no other reason, local competition. In that arena, online pricing is just catching up.
The big limiter on this is that outside of AMZN, the biggest online brands are either brick and mortar retailers (i.e., have stores) or are online product brand sales outlets (i.e., Coach). And most of these multi channel retailers prescribe to the concept of Omnichannel. That is that stores work in concert with their online counterpart channels. Which is in part why HD was like 'we have different prices in different markets...duh'. And product brands (i.e., Coach) are tied to their retail channels and sell at MSRP. So outside of pureplay etailers, there is headwind to the concept. That doesn't stop shop.com from doing it or industries like travel with little brick and mortar presence. AMZN is the big question. Their goal is not to win share from shop.com...that's small fish and are not strategically dangerous. Their goal is to win it from WMT, TGT, etc. and being price competitive with WMT is of critical nature to AMZN. Regardless, AMZN knows the right answer...and I promise they are working it today.
Not the best example. There has always been regional store pricing - if for no other reason, local competition. In that arena, online pricing is just catching up.
The big limiter on this is that outside of AMZN, the biggest online brands are either brick and mortar retailers (i.e., have stores) or are online product brand sales outlets (i.e., Coach). And most of these multi channel retailers prescribe to the concept of Omnichannel. That is that stores work in concert with their online counterpart channels. Which is in part why HD was like 'we have different prices in different markets...duh'. And product brands (i.e., Coach) are tied to their retail channels and sell at MSRP. So outside of pureplay etailers, there is headwind to the concept. That doesn't stop shop.com from doing it or industries like travel with little brick and mortar presence. AMZN is the big question. Their goal is not to win share from shop.com...that's small fish and are not strategically dangerous. Their goal is to win it from WMT, TGT, etc. and being price competitive with WMT is of critical nature to AMZN. Regardless, AMZN knows the right answer...and I promise they are working it today.
