By Doug Stephens<\/p>\n

Barely a day goes by without at least a story or two about how online retailers are eating their brick and mortar counterpart\u2019s lunches.\u00a0 Showrooming<\/a><\/em><\/strong> consumers are giving retailers fits. Physical retail stores are playing host to an increasing contingent of shoppers who are using their stores as touchy-feely galleries only to buy (sometimes then and there) from online competitors.\u00a0 And while only a small percentage of consumers are what can be considered true showroomers \u2013 those who actually buy<\/em> from an online competitor while in a retailers physical store, the digital writing is on the wall \u2013 as smartphone penetration and use increases, retailers can only expect more showrooming and more lost sales.<\/a><\/p>\n

Retailers have responded with a variety of counter-measures, from exclusive products like those that Target has had success with to bundled (buy this\/get this) sorts of value to other things like layaway plans or free product installation. Some, like Best Buy, \u00a0have defaulted to the dark-art of price matching<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 meeting any price on comparable items that a customer can produce evidence of. One Best Buy executive, Michael Vitelli, was recently quoted as saying,<\/p>\n

“Our Blue Shirts are very positive about this and very empowered by giving them the ability to match prices,” said Vitelli. “We’re moving into the fourth competitive quarter with that empowerment, engagement and ability for our Blue Shirts to make the decision in the moment to take care of our customers.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Mr. Vitelli actually believes this, I worry because there are two really dangerous implications to thinking this way.\u00a0 First, that Best Buy regards having to price-match their competitors as a \u201cpositive.\u201d \u00a0Second that staff find having to price match “empowering”.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be honest, price matching is never positive \u2013 for anyone \u2013 even consumers. Everyone loses. In one swift and repeated action you tell consumers that you\u2019re not only over-priced and that your competitors price was more fair \u00a0but also that you have no means of justifying the premium you\u2019re charging and can do little more than capitulate when customers catch you. Customers lose because they\u2019ve had to grovel for a price reduction and while I know some shoppers revel in the victory making a retailer cough up a discount represents, most of us just hate it.\u00a0 And we walk away believing that if you were over-priced on what we needed this time, chances are you\u2019re over \u2013priced on everything and we simply don\u2019t return.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s misguided to assume sales associates feel somehow \u201cempowered\u201d by all this. Believe me, for staff, there\u2019s nothing less<\/em> empowering than having a customer waive a competitor\u2019s flyer in their face and demand a price match.\u00a0 It\u2019s a soul-sucking ordeal and one that bit by bit, day by day, price cut by price cut impresses on them that they\u2019re working in the wrong place. \u00a0 Sure, you\u2019ve alleviated the pressure they can be put under but you\u2019re actually empowering them to publicly demonstrate your company\u2019s weakness on value\u2026every day!\u00a0 That\u2019s not empowerment, it’s brand suicide.<\/p>\n

The truth is, if you\u2019re in a position where you\u2019re only option is to match prices you\u2019re either selling the wrong products or you haven\u2019t reimagined your total brand value proposition to the extent that you\u2019re worth the difference in price. \u00a0That’s the real problem. \u00a0 I\u2019ve said for years that Best Buy needs to completely rethink what it does.\u00a0 The world does need an electronics store but not the kind Best Buy runs right now.\u00a0 They operate pre-Internet stores in a post-internet world.\u00a0 Price matching will only put Band-Aids over the severed arteries that their stores have become.<\/p>\n

To be fair though, Best Buy is hardly alone in adopting the pseudo-strategy of price matching.\u00a0 They\u2019re only one of the more large and visible victims of showrooming.<\/p>\n

Some will read this and say \u201cBut retailers have to do what the have to do.\u00a0 This is about survival!\u201d \u00a0I understand all that. But its critical that companies not characterize price matching as something it\u2019s not.\u00a0 It’s not a strategy. \u00a0It’s merely a short-term measure\u2013 and very often a tombstone epitaph.<\/p>\n

Look for my book, The Retail Revival<\/strong>. in stores February 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Doug Stephens Barely a day goes by without at least a story or two about how online retailers are eating their brick and mortar counterpart\u2019s [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[236,244,24,118],"class_list":["post-1801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-best-buy","tag-price-matching","tag-retail","tag-retail-prophet"],"yoast_head":"\n