
I always like hearing insights from actual employees about company philosophy. A recent forum post, in response to an article about Amazon’s increasing dominance over the publishing industry and a question about why there is no similar warehouse distribution competitor of the same scale, is quite revealing about how one of the most successful “bricks and mortar” companies in the world struggles in managing its multi-channel customer experience when it comes to product pricing and alternative service models to “browse and buy”, such as “reserve and collect”:
Speaking as someone who works for Walmart, I’m not quite sure they “get” online completely just yet. They’re tied to brick and mortar stores, so they are very much ingrained in that mentality.
Take for instance online vs in-store prices. I can find a toaster online for $20, and it probably has the option to buy it “Pick Up Today” so that an employee will shop it for you after you’ve bought it online and you can just come in to pick it up. Even if the in-store price is $25 because there are no toaster retailers besides Walmart in the area of your local store, you still pay the online $20 price.
However, if you go into the actual store and say, “Hey, I don’t want to pay $25! The online price is $20,” they cannot lower the price. You could literally order the toaster on your smartphone and watch the employee pick it up off the shelf and bring it to the back room to save for you, and you’d pay $20, but you cannot just pay $20 without going through the website. – TheEllimist, Reddit.com
The problem is that companies often see different service models and retail channels as silos within the business. However, the customer can increasingly use technology to navigate around those silos to get the best deal, whilst having a somewhat clumsy experience. A better route forward has to be to consider how those boundaries could be blurred so that the customer’s physical and digital shopping baskets are unified, and provide the same financial benefits, from pricing to discounts.



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