I worked at KFC for eight years and one of the key skills they train associates on is up selling. So when you order a 2 pc and fries the team member behind the cashier should smile and ask you Would you be having a “corn on the cob” today with that Maam?
You see there are 2 things that retailers live by; Transactions and Ticket Average (the size of your purchase) They drive you into their store (transactions) through high investments in media and with product news and then once you get there they try to shake every thing they can out of your pockets. In a nice way, of course. Because they also know that the experience you have with them is more important than anything else.
Wal-mart treads on Amazon’s turf – eCommerce
So that Wal-Mart is now going after Amazon’s transactions does not surprise me. The battle is on; Wal-Mart is taking off its gloves and taking on the titans of the online experience, the great Amazon. These Wal-Mart guys keep reinventing themselves and keep innovating, never happy with just winning, they want to annihilate. So they bring you in for the book and up sell you to the Barbecue Pit with a built in stainless steel, frost free refrigerator.
Industry analysts suggested that slashing prices on just 10 titles won’t make much of a dent to the massive Wal-Mart’s bottom line. “If Wal-Mart can use them to get people into the [online] store as a sort of loss leader, they can start selling them other higher margin products,” Mr. Froman an industry analyst said recently. “Wal-Mart is essentially using it to build a database of online customers … Wal-Mart is doing it to make a strong play in the online space.”
They picked up this habit of taking ideas from others from their founder Sam Walton. “I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America. I am just trying to get ideas, any kind of ideas that will help our company. Most of us don’t invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else”, he has been quoted as saying.
Will Amazon still rule The Get-anything-online?
So with Wal-Mart stepping up from bricks to clicks is Amazon going to disappear? I think not. I see a parallel between McD’s McCafe and Starbucks. I was in NY recently and visited a McCafe. The McCafe TV ads comprehensively over promise. It really should have been called McCafeteria. Very unremarkable. By contrast I visited Starbucks several times and I don‘t even drink coffee regularly. The Pumpkin latte and scone got me a few times and the experience sealed the deal. No one, no matter if their name is Sam Walton can be a master of all trades McD makes a decent burger the same way every time in fairly clean and comfortable surroundings. Trying to position themselves as an oasis, the 3rd place you go to, nah!
So Amazon will not die. In fact, they will get better at what they do. Competition is good that way. And they have had a jump start of several years to play in the online pond. I’m betting they are going to keep on swimming all the way to the bank.
