To compete successfully against new online retailers, traditional retailers would also need to find ways to transform the expensive liabilities of physical locations with limited hours and high labor and inventory costs into assets that complemented rather than competed with the online experience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There’s a great line from the column:\u00a0 From Ernest Hemingway\u2019s \u201cThe Sun Also Rises\u201d novel, one character asks another how he went bankrupt.\u00a0 \u201cTwo ways.\u00a0 Gradually, then suddenly.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not shilling for Amazon or any other successful online retailer here.\u00a0 My point is much more basic.\u00a0 Amazon neither invented nor appropriated its basic strategies from Best Buy or anyone else.\u00a0 It simply does what consumers want.\u00a0 Best Buy does what would be most convenient for the company<\/strong> for consumers to want but don\u2019t, then crosses its fingers and prays.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a strategy\u2013or not a winning strategy, in any case, now that retail consumers aren\u2019t stuck with the store closest to home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest hot discussion on the internet is the author Larry Downes versus Best Buy. http:\/\/onforb.es\/y1nkxI To compete successfully against new online retailers, traditional retailers would also need to find ways to transform the expensive liabilities of physical locations with limited hours and high labor and inventory costs into assets that complemented rather than competed … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Gradually, then suddenly”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-business"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p415hC-7S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}