Amazon's scanning app scaring retailers Amazon says Price Check plan good for customers; stores say the technology will hurt local economies By CHRIS CHURCHILL, Business writer Published 11:26 p.m., Friday, December 9, 2011
GUILDERLAND — Retailers are fuming — and fretting — over a new Amazon promotion that encourages shoppers to use bricks-and-mortar stores as showrooms for the online giant.
Amazon is promoting Price Check, the company's new app for smart phones, which allows shoppers to scan a barcode and immediately buy the item online. Presumably then, someone could browse their local mall, visit shop after shop, and yet buy only from Amazon — without waiting in line or lugging shopping bags.
"Welcome to the new gray area of retail," said Clint Hegeman, owner of the Silver Parrot, a boutique at Stuyvesant Plaza in Guilderland. "It was inevitable."
Bricks-and-mortar stores, of course, have been fighting against Internet commerce for years, warning that online shopping eliminates local jobs and undercuts regional economies. They fear Price Check, and similar technologies to follow, will give online stores another advantage.
After all, shopping online always had one big drawback — you couldn't touch the merchandise or try it on.
The technology from Amazon eliminates that concern.
On Saturday, the company is even offering a 5 percent discount, up to $15 total, to shoppers who use its new app.
"The ability to check prices on your mobile phone when you're in a physical retail store is changing the way people shop," Sam Hall, an Amazon executive, said in a statement. "Price transparency means that you can save money on the products you want, and that's a great thing for customers."
Amazon also is encouraging shoppers to simply scan and submit the prices they encounter. Doing so, the company says, will help ensure its prices are the lowest...................>>>>..................>>>>..............Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/busi.....95.php#ixzz1g8a82eOu
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
now they are being exploited.....and that's why I could care less if the retailers track me.....I still dont have to purchase their crap if I dont want to....but the government tracking?---different story there.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
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