Years ago people were pointing and shrieking at Walmart because that business model ate the lunch of Bradlees, Caldor, Barkers, Jamesway and others. Yeah, Sam Walton nailed Mrs.B but good, nudge nudge wink wink. Somehow vestiges of Sears, Macys and JC Penney remain. When I look at their stores locally I wonder why. And stores like Target and Kohls have grown up since and sort of reinvented it all.
Now a new business model is eating their lunch. In the past couple of years I have been dealing with Amazon and have nothing but good experiences to report. I also use them for streaming all sports of good stuff - Man n the High Castle and The Tick, among others.
I've also seen a number of small cottage businesses grow via eBay, as well as deal with a number of online retailers that go under an eBay pseudonym which offer slightly different pricing.
This is capitalism, a narrow form of evolution and survival of the fittest, at work.
In the 'technology and job losses' thread the idea that you have to keep your skills current to be employable was accepted. In this thread I say retailers need to be proactive and keep their business models current.
One example just from today. Looking for some DIY crapola. Got Lowes, Home Depot and Ace Hardware stores nearby. They all have websites I can surf, do online orders etc. But HD provides a mobile app that's just cool, real slickey-fish. It'll tell me exactly where to go in what store to find what I want - necessary because you can never find anyone actually working there that'll be able to help - show me reviews, product manuals, give me ordering options. For those who thought optical character recognition was cool, you should have a look at the optical object recognition bits built into this app. Example, you're looking for a weird electrical connector or plumbing part just hold it in the palm of your hand and let the app take a look at it. It's sifting through an enormous database including all of HD's items and looking for a match.
It's slow and the hit rate is not the best - yet - but when you take a step back and think about what's really going on it's impressive. By itself this app won't make me a die hard HD lover, but like Amazon it's about convenience and general utility and in the end it'll probably allow money to flow from my pocket to theirs more often.