Searss gives credit for book purchases: at competition?

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 6045

Sears issuing credit for certain books purchased at a competitor including Walmart and Target. Get a 9$ coupon/credit from Sears for books purchased elsewhere.

Many have already pointed out that the Sears price is much higher so what's the point. Just lower the price-ooops; need that margin. How many will fall for it...

Better yet what is the scam here- a deal with the publishers?

http://theretailbeat.freedomblogging.com/2009/10/20/sears-adds-a-wrinkle-to-book-price-war/

Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 1568 Location: Michigan

This comes as a real surprise, but that's primarily because I don't make going to Sears.com a priority at all.

I couldn't figure out who is partnering with Sears to do the e-side of their whole "Books" section of the website. If it was Amazon or another big name like Barnes & Noble, that fact would be well noted in logos and such. Amazon did come to mind because of the "free shipping with $25 purchase" notation, but nothing shows that Amazon is actually doing the fulfilling.

Because their whole book section is farmed out, I would suspect that SHC is getting "click-through" fees basically for anyone who buys anything from them. No real costs for them.

Another elaborate e-mail farming operation. Note how far SHC has to go to get some type of sale. What's next? Buy your HBA needs from Sears.com in a partnership with Drugstore.com? Maybe then they'll give you poor schmucks an employee discount on K-Y. Very Happy

Joined: 27 Feb 2009 Posts: 25

Walmart is trying to build traffic to their website for the holidays, hoping to show that they can be another Amazon, so they chose to use these bestsellers as a loss-leader. On the Stephen King book, Walmart will lose $7-8 per copy sold, and so will Amazon and Target because they chose to match the WalMart price. The hope is that people will buy other stuff when they go to the website that Walmart. etc... will make money off of. The publishers aren't providing any special discount to any vendor on these books.

Sears response is basically, OK go ahead and buy your book at one of those sites (and thus cost the competitors money) and come back to our site and buy something that's at least $45 and get $9 off, which means Sears will still make money on the purchase.

Actually, I think it's a fairly clever response to the situation by Sears. I also expect that the DoJ will ultimately go after WalMart on this one because loss-leaders are frequently viewed as a anti-competitive behavior that brings up antitrust issues.

As far as who partners with Sears on books, I believe fulfillment is done by a distributor called Baker and Taylor.

Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 545

http://www.retailwire.com/discussions/sngl_discussion.cfm/14077

Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Posts: 2073

The discussion on retail-wire is interesting:

"I think Sears or any other similar high-priced retailer would be happy to offer a $9 discount on purchases of $45 or more. The most they would have to discount is 20%. I don't think it will have any meaningful impact.
Think about it; what if Sears and Kmart simply told the entire world they are lowering all their prices by 20%? Do you think anyone would care? Of course not; Walmart would still be cheaper and most consumers know that. Sears and Kmart have been conditioning consumers for years to stay away from their stores because of empty or tricky-worded gimmicks. Remember, it was only just recently they came up with a Christmas club that paid a whopping 3%. Or the lay-away plan at Kmart. Or they will give you a break if you lose your job. Just think, there is actually someone working at Sears that gets paid to come up with this stuff."

and from a supporter:

"Instead of being critical all the time, sometimes you should acknowledge a good idea when you see one. This is just a classic way of piggybacking on the hype created by other retailers without paying the price. Sometimes when you are not as powerful as the others, you cannot afford to throw away money in ego battles. Instead, you need to come up with innovative schemes like these, and hats off to them for that."

Joined: 16 Jul 2008 Posts: 41 Location: Pa.

I saw on TV last night a story on the news about Wal-Mart selling caskets on line. It appears this is where the money is. Low over head when you click the mouse. Sears is taking advantage of this as mentioned in the above thread and will probably make thousands of dollars profit at no expense to them. Perhaps we too should sell caskets, I'm sure we could get LG to build them for us and offer both top loaders and front loaders in the Experience next to appliances.

Posted: Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:31 am Post subject:

From page two of sears.com
http://www.sears.com/
Sarah Palin going all ROGUE and stuff.

http://books.sears.com/TRP/actions/searchHandler.do?itemNum=ITEM:10&key=0008572339&nextPage=booksDetails&parentNum=11532

Maybe a fav of Eddie?

Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 1568 Location: Michigan

Don't see Sears getting too much of those Palin book sales. Most folks have ordered from Amazon and Barnes & Noble already.

Didn't see Barack's "Dancing with my Pop" book selling that much or topping the online charts for books sold in PRE-ORDER.
Not only saving jobs, but marriages too
I see the latest BO bandwagon book is going to put Sarah's to shame. But go ahead and buy it at the link above -- spend your week's worth of the stimulus money (remember, $13 a week) Barry's giving ya, at a Sears savings of 26 cents (!) over Amazon.

Joined: 26 Aug 2008 Posts: 269

It won't drive traffic to Sears.com. You can't base your business off getting secondary sales from someone else. It would be no different than if Walmart offered all new release DVD's for $10 in store, and Sears counter offers by saying bring your Walmart reciept in and get $10 credit in store.

Come on, if someone is at Walmart.com already, they are going to make what ever other purchase it is they want or need there. It's no different than physically going in to Walmart.

This is a horrible idea, that while costing nothing for Sears to do, just goes to show the lack of forward thinking by Sears. They do NOTHING to drive people to thier stores or website in the first place. They don't have the guts to do it (they are too worried about margian to give a rats ass about actually selling something) and don't have the imagination to actually do something on thier own that's innovative and will create a buzz.

New and Innovative to SHLD is to switch associates from black/tan/white into blue shirts.

Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Posts: 2073

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