Image via CrunchBase
Books, electronics, toys and now fashion — Amazon is encroaching on the most lucrative consumer product categories and killing traditional retail. How to stop the juggernaut? Level the playing field.
It’s not just about collecting sales tax uniformly across retail — online and in-stores — although that’s a large part of it. It’s about stopping the showroom effect.
Last week Target said it would no longer sell the Kindle in retaliation for Amazon using physical stores as showrooms where shoppers can check out a product, then scan and buy for less on a smartphone app. It shed some light on yet another stilted business practice: Amazon doesn’t allow retail partners that sell the Kindle to sell it online.
This bears repeating: Amazon doesn’t allow retail partners that sell the Kindle to sell it online. And retailers apparently go along with it.
When I originally wrote the story “Target Kicks Kindle To The Curb, Will Best Buy Be Next?” I noted that Walmart didn’t sell the Kindle, but I was wrong. Walmart does in fact sell the Kindle, but only in stores. “Our cutosmers still like buying the Kindle,” said Walmart Spokeswoman, Sarah Spencer. “It’s business as usual.”
Best Buy too sells the Kindle, but not online. But unlike Walmart, it doesn’t even show the product on its Web site, the Kindle family of products comes up in a search on Best Buy’s site saying it’s
