291–300 of 461 posts
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This makes me wonder why physical retail stores don't follow Apple's approach by developing an app so shoppers can self-check out.
Apple has a sky high budget for shoplifting. They have no issue with somebody walking out with an iPhone case because it implies they bought an iPhone. Barnes and Noble would be decimated by that.
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You do understand why. You know that people won't work as much. Will disengage. Will cause trouble and cost you money, time, efforts. This is resources consumed. Some companies value saving resources over human decencies. This is magnified when there is crisis and resources are in shorter supply than before. There is no mystery to it, no complexity to it.
But I'm not suggesting they tell everyone the company is in dire straits and they are on the verge of getting fired. Just don't willfully lie to them on a daily basis and tell them that things are amazing and their jobs are totally secure. In my scenario, we weren't actively asking questions regularly. But they were offering the (mis)information on an almost daily basis.
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>>Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning. Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been o…
>> Retail checkout in the US has become a one-way grilling. At one point Best Buy was trying to get you to sign up for MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTIONS at checkout. Who thought that was a good idea?
A bunch of corporate people who never had to ask someone face to face about buying stupid shit after they've already decided what they want, and a bunch of corporate people who never actually shop at their own stores.
I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I'd grab a copy of a magazine I've been wanting to read for a while. Grabbed the magazine, wandered the aisles a bit and picked up another book then went to check out. Basically I was their marketing department's dream - walk-in traffic coming to buy something cheap and specific who made an impulse retail buy…
>>Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning. Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been o…
Why should they? If they don't they will get fired. Business goes up or down that cashier doesn't get paid more or less...they have no incentive to risk their job for a customer. These companies are so obsessed with squeezing a nickle out of 5% of their customers because they can _measure_ that. Its 'impossible' to measure losses like you with any granularity, so it doesn't matter. They 'can't' incentivize it.
> The people who lost their jobs had been actively assured this would NOT happen for the past several months. My last employer did this. Not so much the exact scenario, but they constantly assured us they were fully committed for the long-term to our satellite office that they opened. They went out of their way to reiterate this quite regularly and put a good of effort into it. Until one day they showed up and shut d…
they do it so employees don't quit beforehand, so that they can keep using them to make money until the last second, while not giving them any opportunity to find a new job so they don't miss rent the week after they're fired if it's not illegal it should be, and I'm sure there is some ground for a civil lawsuit in the fact they they assured them they would not lose their jobs, thereby costing them thousands in lost…
I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I'd grab a copy of a magazine I've been wanting to read for a while. Grabbed the magazine, wandered the aisles a bit and picked up another book then went to check out. Basically I was their marketing department's dream - walk-in traffic coming to buy something cheap and specific who made an impulse retail buy…
>>Two cashiers working out of 8 or so possible registers And the worst part about this is that each cashier seems determined to relentlessly pester me with annoying questions at the register! Did I want to join this loyalty program? Did I realize that I could save $5 by signing up for so and so. Do I want to get on the B&N mailing list? Really aggressive questioning. Oh my God. I realize that the cashiers have been o…
I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I'd grab a copy of a magazine I've been wanting to read for a while. Grabbed the magazine, wandered the aisles a bit and picked up another book then went to check out. Basically I was their marketing department's dream - walk-in traffic coming to buy something cheap and specific who made an impulse retail buy…
Just another case of business being penny smart and dollar dumb. "Traditional" media did the exact same thing when faced with competition from the internet. They reduced the quality of their service & product when they saw a reduction in customers which only fueled a further reduction in customers, rinse and repeat til death.
I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I'd grab a copy of a magazine I've been wanting to read for a while. Grabbed the magazine, wandered the aisles a bit and picked up another book then went to check out. Basically I was their marketing department's dream - walk-in traffic coming to buy something cheap and specific who made an impulse retail buy…
This is a perfect instance for self-checkout kiosks. They're everywhere: big retailers like Target, chain groceries, national pharmacies, home improvement stores, and they're turning up in smaller places and even fast food venues. This suggests to me that the kiosk price is dropping and there's less reason to have empty registers and long lines except for deliberate ignorance.
This is the flip-side of creative destruction. Amazon and ecommerce in general have given us a world where brick and mortar retail often just can't compete. 99% of these layoffs and restructurings, etc. are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The writer of this article seems to think that the executives are just trying to milk the company all the way down, but it's not even clear to me there's a better o…
I agree with the beginning, especially about the deck chairs as its an expression I often use. Let's be clear its people like me who killed Barnes and Noble not its executives. I have two or three sets of bookshelves downstairs in my office filled with books, many of which were bought at B&N. I spent hours sipping coffee in their cafe's. Then I bought my kindle. And I basically have not been back since. When I do buy…
The main thing I miss is browsing for books; the experience on the Kindle or on the web is terrible compared to walking down an aisle and flipping through books that draw my interest. I have young children now, so I purchase a fair number of physical books for them, mostly through Amazon, but occasionally browsing in our local Barnes and Noble. Whenever I'm there, I find myself rooting through the shelves, finding all sorts of interesting books that I want to buy, and then I guiltily take a picture of them to buy on Amazon later for my kindle.
EDIT: One thing I have noticed, though, is the increase in price gouging in ebook sales. I think a result of the Hachette deal; lots of things that would have been $6 mass-market paperbacks are instead $10. Unfortunately, this is not local to Amazon, so leaving the ecosystem is no help at all.
I was out shopping 3-4 days before Christmas this year, and happened to be near a Barnes and Noble so figured I'd grab a copy of a magazine I've been wanting to read for a while. Grabbed the magazine, wandered the aisles a bit and picked up another book then went to check out. Basically I was their marketing department's dream - walk-in traffic coming to buy something cheap and specific who made an impulse retail buy…
I wonder if Barnes and Noble sells reduced quality books the same way that Wal*Mart gets brands to make cheaper but reduced quality versions of their products for their stores.
Either way it turns me off. They are pretty good at getting me into the store to use my laptop at the Starbucks or for when my son is doing a group project and the other students are meeting there -- only to immediately turn me off with inferior products.
As in the story above, bad experiences don't just cost a sale immediately, but they might cost all future sales from that customer.