Is the average online shopper loyal? Would he still pay 5% more on Amazon than buying the same product from a not so well known online seller? I say it depends on what a person is buying.
If its a $3k plasma television then sure go ahead and buy from Amazon (given that they give a 30 day price guarantee (more on that later) and their electronics prices are very competitive… after rebates mostly). But what if its a $30-50 book or some similar product whose price doesn’t fluctuate as much as electronics? I don’t see why I should be loyal to any online seller when buying such a product. This is in contrast to an old essay by Joel Spolsky on Ben and Jerry’s vs. Amazon, where he talks about network effects and customer lock-in.
All this came to my mind when I was on a book buying spree this week. I bought 4 books and none of them from Amazon! Froogle searches led me to these two great sites: superbookdeals and bookpool. Below is the money I saved on each book (including shipping costs etc.):
- The Art of Product Management — Scott Berkum ** Money Saved = $7
- Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X — Aaron Hillegass ** Money Saved = $7.05
- Java Puzzlers: Traps, Pitfalls, and Corner Cases – Joshua Bloch ** Money Saved = $12.04
- PHP and MySQL Web Development — Luke Welling & Laura Thomson ** Money Saved = $4.34
The best part of these purchases was not the price after all. It was the fact that ALL books shipped the next business day. This has not happened on my Amazon orders in the last 6 months at least. They have this clause that if you use “Free Shipping” then shipping of the order will be delayed by 3-4 days even if the product page said “Usually ships in 24 hours”. My advice: dump big online sellers and go for small sellers who are ready to give better service at a much better price!