Re: Books vs. cars...
<Your comments sound like the same ones somebody made about Amazon.com, "who would wanna buy a book online when I can go to the bookstore and look at it and buy it now?" Look at Amazon now.>
NOT A VALID COMPARISON... you cannot compare a $10-30 product with a $15,000 - $60,000 + product purchase.
Agree, but OTOH, there is no pent-up consumer resentment with the way books are currently sold. Barnes & Noble is IMO a great store and very pleasant shopping experience. Amazon is merely providing convenience...counting shipping costs the savings over going to the store is miniscule. So the valuations of AMZN do indeed flabergast me. Ditto for supermarket delivery stocks like PPOD...enlightened grocery chains are working hard to make their shopping experience actually exciting! Check out latest issue of Fast Company for a particularly innovative example. IMO convenience is not compelling enough a reason to invoke the internet to make the purchase. You need more.
Now...contrast relatively pleasant environment of book shopping vs. car shopping. You already know the drill...high pressure sales jerks, rustproofing and extended warranty "special offers" which border on being (or are outright) scams...and women still are treated as if it's still the 1950's. Consumer disgust over this process has been festering for decades!
My .02...AMZN, PPOD, etc. merely provide convenience, but there really IMO no "problem" per se with the shopping experience they replace. Quite the opposite for cars...AWEB, ABTL are solving a serious, widespread consumer problem: the current way cars are sold is unacceptable, and in many cases fraudulent.
BTW, nor is the status quo particularly great for dealers, ethical or no. They get cars pushed to them, where they sit on the lot and sit and sit...very inefficient.
Its not even apples and oranges... more like pees and watermellons!
Well I for one don't want to be "peed" on by 'Honest Lenny' at the ethics-free car dealership down the street either! :-) |
