I don't really have a complete idea of how the customer journey works for the time being. But basically the customer would come to the website and tell me what he wants to buy. I'll then create him a lower priced offer that's only for him. There wouldn't be a bartering phase. Instead, he gets a fixed price from me, one that's lower than what he has found earlier from Amazon.
Not sure, they weren't always invite-only. You can find mixed opinions about them online. Things used to be more open but now they've put various restrictions in place so you can view that as you will: either they're very popular or things aren't going very well.
Why should this remove the bartering phase and not transform it to a "hey lets look what prices my friends would get" or alternative services, where people post their personal prices for products to compare them?
>But basically the customer would come to the website and tell me what he wants to buy. I'll then create him a lower priced offer that's only for him.
So... a worse version of a price comparison website? Instead of showing the best price, you want to show only a price better than customer's previous? Why wouldn't people just use a normal price comparison website which shows the cheapest offer?
I think there's a misunderstanding here. The price will not be found elsewhere. It will be a price that's created by me based on several factors - one being the lowest price available in the market.
>It will be a price that's created by me based on several factors - one being the lowest price available in the market.
If a supplier has the best price in the market, it makes sense for him to advertise this fact. So either a supplier is losing potential money by listing minimum price only with you, which is extremely unlikely, or your lowest price will be equal or higher than the lowest on price comparison websites, thus making your website useless. The same people who may use your site are already using price comparison websites.
I can see your idea working if you could somehow display your offer to people who aren't shopping for lowest price while they're buying somewhere else, but how? I think some adware did exactly that...
An another existing variation of that idea is decreasing the price when customer changes his mind at the last moment.
Stores often try and sell things as cheap as possible, so being able to beat this is going to be difficult, especially against the likes of amazon. There is a reason they set those prices!
There is a company in Australia called bing lee (http://www.binglee.com.au) that allows you to do this. You can either barter in store or via their chat on their website.
I don't see this idea being successful easily. Driving people to your site and making them interact with you would be difficult. I personally couldn't bother with such a site, too much effort. I'd rather see whatever is cheapest on a few different sites and go from there.
Amazon's prices are already dirt cheap because of their economy of scale. You'll find it hard to compete with them for very long except where they have loss leaders. Same with eBay. eBay would be even harder because most things are way cheaper than market price or eBay exclusive.
N.B. Amazon has never really made profit because Bezos keeps pouring profit back into Amazon to make prices lower and to keep customers happier.
Read Amazon's terms carefully. I suspect they forbid what you are planning. You could try to do it against the terms, but I don't think you would get too far.
Things would be sold cheaper than competition and that's right. However, the unique part of the idea is to keep the price private - it is only revealed to the buyer who has already decided he wants to buy that item. This would be the solution for small to mid size retailers in getting sales diverted to them from those big players. Prices are kept private for a reason - to soften the onset of price competition.
Is the goal that the user will enter a binding contract to buy without knowing what they'll pay?
There already is price competition. Anyone who can Google for 5 minutes can find the lowest price, and that's probably fulfilled by Amazon or another large retailer. The idea that you'll carry every product, offer a lower price than Amazon, and convince people to participate in this weird pricing scheme is pretty absurd.
Good ideas aren't always obvious, and just because an idea seems bad that doesn't make it bad. If you have a valid refutation of this idea, why not present it?
Unless one has an original product or one of a kind product there is no way to charge less than Amazon. Well, there is one way and that is if Amazon runs out of the product you happen to have then you will be allowed to sell yours.
Amazon monitors the trend and has the purchasing power to buy trending items and sell at a low price. Amazon does not allow you to set your prices lower than theirs.
I think it's a bad idea, if i'm not mistaking... You are going to contact suppliers / authors of Amazon and say: hey, i have a buyer for your book for 9$ instead of the 9,99 on Amazon.
The author will just delete your email, why would he spend one minute on confirming the deal for a lousy 9 dollar, he doesn't care and he already has his lowest price on Amazon. If he agrees with you, then Amazon will also want a lower price (and then it will cost him a lot of money)
> why would he spend one minute on confirming the deal for a lousy 9 dollar, he doesn't care and he already has his lowest price on Amazon.
Despite the strong competition, no merchant/supplier will publicly advertise his lowest possible price because that would be incredibly short-sighted. They advertise the lowest price they can offer OR the highest price sufficient to undercut the competition, whichever of these is higher. So it's effectively 1 cent below the second cheapest offer for merchants who can go (sometimes much) lower.
Therefore, it's reasonable to expect them to accept lower priced offers made to them directly in some cases.
In cases where there is no direct competition (i.e. authors who are the sole providers of said product), prices are strategically chosen (not dictated by competition) and therefore direct sales at lower prices are much more likely.
(Amazon will never know the lower price, I presume)
Are you proposing a reverse market, such as Zaarly initially did? If so, Fishbacks quora post about their pivot may explain to you why it's unlikely to work:
http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Zaarly-pivot
I get the impression that writeup could be condensed down to a single paragraph. I wound up seven or so several introductory paragraphs.
That said, I think the idea of keeping prices personal and private is great for boutique services, but generally sucks otherwise. When searching for products and services, I'm usually looking for price first and reputation, etc. later, since that's nearly impossible to prove in a depersonalized internet service.
In other words, anyone can put up a website proclaiming that they are the most awesome at whatever they do so they can justify a price point, but there's no way to prove it objectively.
So, we're left with cost. The rest is just what you can stomach.
So it's like a dark pool (in the capital markets sense) for retail, in which you try to undercut the market maker's (Amazon) spread by narrowing it yourself and not telling anyone about how narrow it is? It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it would work because (as many commenters here have already said) Amazon's spread is already quite narrow.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 65.8 ms ] threadIt sort of reads like "A customer comes to my website and asks me what's the best price I can do on a pair of Beats Headphones." Is that right?
Why would a customer enter a bartering phase with you, rather than just seeing that Amazon sells them for £x?
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/flubit-london-start-up-aiming-next-...
It's a little odd that they've gone invite only
Why should this remove the bartering phase and not transform it to a "hey lets look what prices my friends would get" or alternative services, where people post their personal prices for products to compare them?
So... a worse version of a price comparison website? Instead of showing the best price, you want to show only a price better than customer's previous? Why wouldn't people just use a normal price comparison website which shows the cheapest offer?
If a supplier has the best price in the market, it makes sense for him to advertise this fact. So either a supplier is losing potential money by listing minimum price only with you, which is extremely unlikely, or your lowest price will be equal or higher than the lowest on price comparison websites, thus making your website useless. The same people who may use your site are already using price comparison websites.
I can see your idea working if you could somehow display your offer to people who aren't shopping for lowest price while they're buying somewhere else, but how? I think some adware did exactly that...
An another existing variation of that idea is decreasing the price when customer changes his mind at the last moment.
There is a company in Australia called bing lee (http://www.binglee.com.au) that allows you to do this. You can either barter in store or via their chat on their website.
I don't see this idea being successful easily. Driving people to your site and making them interact with you would be difficult. I personally couldn't bother with such a site, too much effort. I'd rather see whatever is cheapest on a few different sites and go from there.
N.B. Amazon has never really made profit because Bezos keeps pouring profit back into Amazon to make prices lower and to keep customers happier.
There already is price competition. Anyone who can Google for 5 minutes can find the lowest price, and that's probably fulfilled by Amazon or another large retailer. The idea that you'll carry every product, offer a lower price than Amazon, and convince people to participate in this weird pricing scheme is pretty absurd.
Amazon monitors the trend and has the purchasing power to buy trending items and sell at a low price. Amazon does not allow you to set your prices lower than theirs.
The author will just delete your email, why would he spend one minute on confirming the deal for a lousy 9 dollar, he doesn't care and he already has his lowest price on Amazon. If he agrees with you, then Amazon will also want a lower price (and then it will cost him a lot of money)
Despite the strong competition, no merchant/supplier will publicly advertise his lowest possible price because that would be incredibly short-sighted. They advertise the lowest price they can offer OR the highest price sufficient to undercut the competition, whichever of these is higher. So it's effectively 1 cent below the second cheapest offer for merchants who can go (sometimes much) lower.
Therefore, it's reasonable to expect them to accept lower priced offers made to them directly in some cases.
In cases where there is no direct competition (i.e. authors who are the sole providers of said product), prices are strategically chosen (not dictated by competition) and therefore direct sales at lower prices are much more likely.
(Amazon will never know the lower price, I presume)
That said, I think the idea of keeping prices personal and private is great for boutique services, but generally sucks otherwise. When searching for products and services, I'm usually looking for price first and reputation, etc. later, since that's nearly impossible to prove in a depersonalized internet service.
In other words, anyone can put up a website proclaiming that they are the most awesome at whatever they do so they can justify a price point, but there's no way to prove it objectively.
So, we're left with cost. The rest is just what you can stomach.