Currently, there is a split in the road by which people conduct commerce with one another. One path of the road leads down the path of selling online. The other gravitates towards to the direction of small business, brick-and-mortar selling. One is the traditional means of buying and selling, the other, a new, fresh approach. As online selling, with companies such as ecommerce wiz Amazon, becomes more popular, the question comes to the forefront as to whether or not the two selling styles can coexist or even go as far as to work together. Let’s look at the ways that Amazon could work complimentarily with one another.
Brick-and-Mortar Benefitting from Amazon
While it may seem that online Amazon selling and brick-and-mortar selling can only operate mutually exclusive from one another, this is not entirely the case. There are ways that the two sellings avenues could work in tandem with one another. That being said, Amazon provides services that prove beneficial to itself as well as small businesses at the same time.
Amazon Marketplace Web Services give business owners the chance to, in a sense, lease virtual commercial space for their storefront, where they can have their products showcased by anybody online, giving the standard small business owner a leg up in the ecommerce realm. Utilizing Fulfillment by Amazon, business owners can propel their selling efforts, as all of the logistics efforts such as packing and shipping are handled by Amazon. Last, Amazon Pay gives your customers a universal way to pay for your products that will ensure security and trust for your customers. In summation, there are a lot of Amazon programs that benefit the brick-and-mortar small business.
Amazon Benefitting from Brick-and-Mortar
The thing with Amazon is that it appears to be this massive entity within the selling world, but it does have an achilles heel. People love the ability to go physically shop in brick-and-mortar locations. For sake of being able to feel and try things or buy them quickly and easily when ready, people still, even in such a heavily digital time, opt to go to stores so that they can establish certainty that the item in question is the right match. For this reason, brick-and-mortar has the advantage in the fact that people will always, in one case or another, prefer shopping in-store.
The way that brick-and-mortar has benefitted Amazon is more so in theory. Small brick-and-mortar businesses may benefit Amazon through the way that they promote the Amazon name when they use Amazon services like those mentioned earlier, however, the primary way they benefit Amazon is by showing Amazon the advantage of physical selling. Amazon is taking the brick-and-mortar selling style and adopting itself. It is still very soon in these efforts, and time will tell the effectiveness of Amazon selling in a brick-and-mortar fashion.
Competition
While there are many ways that Amazon and small brick-and-mortar businesses can benefit one another, there is one crucial way that they operate in tandem with one another. That is through the competition between the two. What you find is a system of checks and balances that aids commerce in general and the entire selling arena. Here is how this works:
People may have a concern that Amazon will overpower more and more brick-and-mortar stores. Under this line of thinking, the end expectation is that Amazon would monopolize retail selling, providing no competition. What could be anticipated from a selling world where only Amazon is putting the sales through, is that they will set prices and standards reflective of having no competition, that being high prices and low quality standards, etc. Consumers have the choice in deciding through whom they wish to buy their products. If Amazon gets into a position where it is changing in favor of itself despite the customer (an unbiased assumption of what could happen if any company has too much control over the market, Amazon or anyone else for that matter), the consumer has the choosing power to opt for a different option, namely, smaller business or business without association to Amazon.
The same could be done vise versa, with Amazon being an option for those unhappy with brick-and-mortar shopping. This competition between shopping mediums is what will keep all business afloat, and that resilient presence of multiple businesses is one of the greatest forms of collaboration.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Amazon and the common small brick-and-mortar business owner operate in two very different ways and in most cases, operate rather exclusively and separated from one another. While it may seem that there could not be ways that these two selling entities could join forces for the sake of commerce, there are certainly ways in which they work in tandem or maintain a balance together for the benefit of everyone involved. To learn more about the Amazon services mentioned in this piece or how to get your small business running on a larger scale through digital web services, contact Rave Retailer today!