Variable Markup

Standing in a Barnes & Noble, flipping through a book you are considering to purchase, you can now pull out your cell phone, write a txt a message to 262966 (Amazon on a phone pad) that contains the ISDN, UPC code, or name of the book and Amazon will reply back with the price of the book and an offer to buy it.    The book could now be 20-40% cheaper if you are willing to wait a couple days for shipping. 

The next versions are sure to include being able to take a picture of the UPC with your phone camera, send that up and receive your price and availability of the product. 

 This time next year, it will be interesting to know what percentage of retail store sales are pre-scanned at Amazon before purchase. 

 Also consider the possibilities of advertising.  While walking through the airport, an advertisement panel on the wall shows the latest Iacocca leadership book and at the bottom it gives you the Amazon SMS # and a short code for the product.  In two minutes you’ve purchased the book. 

About six months ago we designed a similar addon module for Blue Martini Commerce that would allow this type of sms commerce.  It fell in the priority list as being a little too far out there from a consumer adoption standpoint.  Looks like we will need to reconsider. 

Barnes & Noble refreshed their website recently and some of the additions are useful but overall falls short.    When you reach the refreshed site, a 1/3 of the page is dedicated to B&N picks presented in a scrolling flash window.  Unfortunately, you are only given a pause button instead of back/forward/skip a page controls.  This leads to problems when you are interested in an item and you don’t get your mouse up to it quick enough, it’s off the page and you have to wait for a full rotation to get back to it.   It’s also dissappointing that in 2007 the picks are selections chosen by BN without any regard to who I am.  (continue reading…)