Amazon.com, call it by any other name, would it not still taste as sweet?

from the September-3,-1999 dept

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Friends of the Revolution
by Derek Kerton

What's in an e-commerce site?
Amazon.com, call it by any other name, would it not still taste as sweet?  Idon't think so.    

 I'm no newbie to online shopping, having spent easily over $5,000 on
online purchases since 1995.  Thus far I have confined myself to e-stores
whose reputations I knew from positive press, recommendations, or brick and
mortar experience.  But last week, while shopping for a desktop phone, my
wife suggested I use CNet's comparison shopping tool, shopper.com.  Sure
enough, shopper.com showed me that I could save $30 if I bought from
Programmer's Paradise, an outfit on the East coast.  "Well, I've never heard
of them," I said, "but thirty bucks is thirty bucks."  I ordered with two
day land delivery and printed my confirmation receipt.

  Five days later, we called to see where the phone was, and the response
was "That product has been cancelled."  We asked what that meant - was the
"product cancelled" or just our order, is it delayed, annulled, on
backorder, and were we billed?  She repeated "The product has been
cancelled" and got annoyed at our questions.  We concluded that our order
was "most likely" cancelled, and mentioned that it would have been swell if
they had notified us using the email address we gave.  She became more
annoyed.  I hung up and bought the phone from buy.com.

  Well, it doesn't take too many experiences like that before net shoppers
will learn to stick with the etailers they trust.  The proliferation of
cheap but lousy web stores is eventually helping those big stores with good
reputations and brand identities.  Jesse Berst at ZDNet predicted a e-tail
shakedown and consolidation in his column this week.  It used to be that
pundits predicted brand was dead on the web, that price would soon be all
that matters - hogwash!  A quality brand on the web will keep shoppers
coming back.  Amazon can charge more for the same book than its no-name
online competition because of their quality brand.

  Quality of service matters MORE on the web that in the old world.  If I
saw my phone on the shelf at Target and also at Bloomindale's, you bet your
ass I'd buy it at Target.  Sure the Bloomingdale staff are available to
answer questions, and will wrap it up in a nice bag.  But at either store I
would walk out with the same phone so why pay more?  Fulfillment (getting
the product to the customer) is a non-issue in brick and mortar.  But
online, oh my, is fulfillment ever an issue:  orders never shipped, never
received, shipped twice, shipped late, out of stock, held up in customs...
Sound familiar?  What about if instead of dropping in, you phoned Target and
Bloomies to ship the phone to you?  Would you think twice about buying at
Target now?  ...A-ha.

  It's the McDonald's model all over again.  When you drive into a new town
with a hunger on, you see all sorts of independent restaurant's front-ends
from the street.  The inside is a mystery.  Is the restaurant clean, is the
food good, or even safe?  How's the service?  You won't know unless you go
inside and order.  That's analogous to an e-commerce operation.  You can see
the front-end (meaning the web pages,) but you have no idea what goes on
behind the facade.  In the case of restaurants, you KNOW some of them are
good but you also know that some of them are really bad.  What do you do?
You go to McD's.  You may not love it, but you know the place from front to
back and the OK quality is assured.  Quality doesn't even have to be
superior - just *consistenly* OK!!

  Do you ever go to McD's in your hometown?  Hell, no!  You know the
independent restaurants there, and you frequent those which are good.  The
difference with the web is:  It just ain't your hometown.



PS:  I'm taking bets on whether Programmer's Paradise bills me or not...

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