Electronic Retailer - October 2011 - 50

RICK PETRY

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Natural Selection
exactly what you want with the click of a mouse without leaving your house is often worth the inconvenience of a few days wait. While one could argue that the sense of discovery one gets by wandering a physical bookstore is lost in the viral experience, an online retailer such as Amazon offers a far vaster opportunity for exploration, albeit a different one. Now you’re not just relying on staff recommendations, but an entire community of enthusiasts expressing their points of view on a particular product offering. The ability of the online retail environment to then make associations with other products in a nonlinear way – as opposed to having products grouped by genre, for example – is yet another favorable distinction. It’s not unlike online dating; instead of the narrow gene pool at the local bar, now singles have infinite choice. Like the online shopper who can’t touch and examine a product, what the online dater gives up is the ability to look their prospective mate in the eye until they meet for a cup of coffee. Only then can they decide for themselves whether or not they’ve become a victim of false advertising. There is a lot of debate about whether the loss of hand-to-hand experience is good for society or not. But lest we forget, it is ultimately the public’s preference for the better-built mousetrap that ushers in such corporate Darwinism. Blockbuster took out all of the mom and pop video stores, and then Netflix took out Blockbuster. Now Amazon, iTunes and Redbox threaten Netflix’s dominance. That brings us back to my affectionate memories of growing up in the California state capital. Do I miss the great movie palaces of my youth with their gilded plaster of Paris scrolls and balconies? Of course I do. Would I give up the convenience of a high-definition On Demand movie in the comfort of my family room to bring them back? No, probably not. Change, as they say, is inevitable. Though one may feel a sense of wistfulness for that which is gone, such feelings abate with the mindless flick of a remote control or the single click of a mouse. Rick Petry is a freelance writer who specializes in direct marketing and is a past chairman of ERA. He can be reached at (503) 740-9065, online at rickpetry.com or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thepetrydish.

Recently I joined the Facebook group “Things I Remember Growing Up In Sacramento,” a repository of nostalgia where baby boomers recall the stuff of their youth. Amid the fond recollections of Frampton Comes Alive, S&H Green Stamps and streaking came the names of such favorite haunts as Gemco, the tiki-themed prom dinner fave The Coral Reef, Tower Records and the 49’er Drive-In Theatre – all once thriving businesses, all now defunct. This roll call was a cogent reminder that the recent demise of Borders Books is merely the latest chapter in a long history of businesses ultimately driven to extinction by fundamental shifts in consumer behavior. Yet, for many, such passages are not without a profound sense of loss. As one colleague lamented, “We all hated Borders for putting the neighborhood bookstores out of business. But then Borders became the neighborhood bookstore. Now there is nothing.”

As one colleague lamented, “We all hated Borders for putting the neighborhood bookstores out of business. But then Borders became the neighborhood bookstore. Now there is nothing.”
Yet there is something: It’s a 900-pound gorilla called Amazon.com. This is the very same Amazon where Borders parked its online presence for several critical years, while competitors got their e-commerce act together. And while it is indeed painful to witness a once-thriving enterprise slowly suffocate to death under the weight of consumer indifference, there is inevitably something to be gained. In Borders’ case, its brick-and-mortar buzz became no match for the ability of e-commerce to empower consumers with a triad of dynamic advantages. These include infinite choice, discount pricing and, with the accelerated adoption of e-readers, tablets and online book, music and movie libraries, the instant gratification of the download. Anyone who’s driven from store to store searching for a particular item only to be frustrated by a lack of inventory knows that the peace of mind of getting

electronicRETAILER | October 2011

Electronic Retailer - October 2011

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