Are Companies Even Listening To Us?
I spend a lot of time shopping and spending money on books on Amazon.com. They do an absolutely great job making product recommendations to me. I've actually spent more money because their cross-selling algorithm is so effective at determining what I want.
Contrast this with Borders. Borders made me get this annoying "Borders Rewards" card that they make me haul around on my keys to get discounts and coupons from them. As an individual, they know what I'm buying is mostly computer books. In all of the emails from Borders, I've never gotten a notice about the new computer books coming out.
The same is true with Barnes & Noble. Here's another blogger named Jon Dale saying exactly the same thing I am: Why We Love Email from Amazon and Hate Email from Barnes & Noble. He contends that because Barnes & Noble doesn't do directed mailings, their emails get treated like spam. He's absolutely right.
Jon Dale wrote that blog post almost two years ago. In my estimation, very little has been done to improve the situation since then. Which begs the question: are they even listening to what people are saying? I don't know about you, but I love books, and I love getting new ideas, and I love hanging out in Borders for long stretches of time looking for an excuse to buy something. Most people like me are rooting for Borders and hope that they emerge from this horrible economic situation, because if they don't, we'll have no place else to loiter on the weekend and buy the books we don't want to wait for Amazon to ship to us.
Time was, people voiced their opinions with their wallets. The only way Borders and B&N could figure out what titles to stock was by counting how many sold, and then stocking the ones that sold a lot of copies. That's why almost every book says "Bestseller" on the cover, even though that long ago stopped differentiating them from one another.
But now, they can track individual purchases and do more directed marketing, and they're not. What's more, customers are happily voicing their suggestions in the blogosphere and they're being ignored. Is it any wonder, then, that they're struggling to make money?
Contrast this with Borders. Borders made me get this annoying "Borders Rewards" card that they make me haul around on my keys to get discounts and coupons from them. As an individual, they know what I'm buying is mostly computer books. In all of the emails from Borders, I've never gotten a notice about the new computer books coming out.
The same is true with Barnes & Noble. Here's another blogger named Jon Dale saying exactly the same thing I am: Why We Love Email from Amazon and Hate Email from Barnes & Noble. He contends that because Barnes & Noble doesn't do directed mailings, their emails get treated like spam. He's absolutely right.
Jon Dale wrote that blog post almost two years ago. In my estimation, very little has been done to improve the situation since then. Which begs the question: are they even listening to what people are saying? I don't know about you, but I love books, and I love getting new ideas, and I love hanging out in Borders for long stretches of time looking for an excuse to buy something. Most people like me are rooting for Borders and hope that they emerge from this horrible economic situation, because if they don't, we'll have no place else to loiter on the weekend and buy the books we don't want to wait for Amazon to ship to us.
Time was, people voiced their opinions with their wallets. The only way Borders and B&N could figure out what titles to stock was by counting how many sold, and then stocking the ones that sold a lot of copies. That's why almost every book says "Bestseller" on the cover, even though that long ago stopped differentiating them from one another.
But now, they can track individual purchases and do more directed marketing, and they're not. What's more, customers are happily voicing their suggestions in the blogosphere and they're being ignored. Is it any wonder, then, that they're struggling to make money?