Bits Are High-Street Retailers on their Last Legs?

THe problem is part HMV's (i.e. in-store prices are higher than even HMV's online price) and part the fact that physical sales are falling.

The HMV's near us (Sheffield city centre and Meadowhell) were both packed at Christmas. Why? Firstly, some people didn't trust the online sellers to actually get orders out in time for Christmas! Secondly. some people will always want a physical copy that they can buy there and then. How many bricks and mortar stores those people can support is obviously less than we have at the moment, but I doubt it will lead to the eradication of all brick and mortar stores.

 

Clinton cards yesterday, bought a birthday card, expected the price to be around £2.99, it was nothing special. £5.99 ... now I know Clintons is up shitcreak but over-charging me for a cheap card means I am seriously considering Moonpig (or insert other popular mail order card co.'s here) for all future card purchases.

High St. shooting themselves in the foot.

 

I feel generally retail, either online or in the high street, has fallen well below what I consider to be a pleasant experience. This year most of my major purchases and a few of the smaller ones have been nothing but hassle. High street stores have nothing I want in stock and resorting to purchases online - they fail to deliver on time. I appreciate that shipping is out of the hands of online stores, but why is this still a problem?
I am getting to the point of being freaked out if I see something I might like to purchase as I am constantly disappointed with the retail industry.

 

Im not surprised with Hmv. I never shop from there, everything is always more expensive there. There not to competitive on priceing. My bro buys fromthere alot of the time and finds out what ever he buys he usualy could have got cheaper else where. I always advise him not to buy from there but he still does lol. He doesnt want to buy online as he cant wait for delivery, But even other high street retailers are cheaper the Hmv.

 

I think a lot of that, especially in the brick and mortar market, is a product of the race to the bottom price-wise. as retailers get smaller and smaller margins one of the places they cut costs is salaries. So many of the sales staff are making minimum wage and the managers not much more, which doesn't tend to motivate people to provide top quality service. This is actually a failure of leadership, but with low cost being the most important attribute of an employee, the strong leaders apply elsewhere. The customers also buy into this paradigm and equate low proces with poor service.

 

One thing that always riled me about HMV was there sale antics. I remember looking at some "Carry On..." dvd's I was interested in. The price was £10 each, which wasn't too bad. I went in the week later during the sale and saw they were on "Buy One Get One Free". Great I thought, I went to pick up the Carry On dvd(s) I had selected to suddenly find the price had gone up to £19.99 and buy one get one free. What a scam!

 

Is it me or do the photos in the article look a little shopped?