Amazon, Wal-Mart battling over book pricing
Wal-Mart Stores has waged an online book pricing war against Amazon.com, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday morning.
Wal-Mart sent the first salvo over Amazon's bow on Thursday when the retail giant announced that it would sell ten highly anticipated books for $10 on Walmart.com. Wal-Mart said Stephen King's upcoming hardcover "Under the Dome" and Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" will be included in that grouping. Wal-Mart's prices include free shipping.
Not to be outdone, Amazon reduced prices to match Wal-Mart's pricing on all 10 titles. That was quickly followed by Wal-Mart's decision to reduce the prices on those books again to $9 late Thursday night. In response, Amazon reduced the prices of all ten titles to $9, as well. The company also reduced the books' Kindle pricing to $9. That's where the prices stand on both sites as of this writing.
Sarah Palin's book is going for $9 on Wal-Mart.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)"If there is going to be a 'Wal-Mart of the Web,' it is going to be Walmart.com," Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. "Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site."
As viable a goal as that may be for Wal-Mart, it could also cost the online-retail industry dearly. According to the Journal, Wal-Mart is already offering up to 200 best sellers for "50 percent of their list price." That's a figure that most retailers can't keep up with. And as the publication pointed out, it's a price point that could put smaller, less powerful organizations out of business.
"Retailers traditionally pay half the list price for a hardcover book," the Journal wrote in its report. "Assuming that's the case with Wal-Mart, its $10 sale price on 'Under the Dome' represents a 71 percent discount of the $35 cover price, which suggests the discounter will lose $7 to $7.50 on every copy it sells." Wal-Mart might be able to afford that, but other, smaller retailers might not.
But $10 might not be a figure that Wal-Mart picked out of the air. Quite the contrary, the retail giant might have chosen $10 because it's the same price Amazon is currently offering e-books for in its Kindle store. Wal-Mart is, so far, on the outside looking in at the e-book market and the sale of highly anticipated hardcovers for $10 might reflect that.
That said, the company told the Journal that its decision to drop the price of those major titles had nothing to do with the Kindle. Even so, Wal-Mart is a major retailer with loads of cash that it can easily put towards infiltrating a discount book market--electronic or otherwise. A loss on select titles might be worth it in the long run. It could stymie some of the Kindle's impressive growth. That might have been Wal-Mart's intention all along.
What do you think of this? Is Wal-Mart the hero for offering hardcover books at such discounted rates? Is Amazon wrong for matching its pricing? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Plus buying it from Amazon.com = TAX FREE + FREE SHIPPING (unless you are living in WA). Let's see Walmart match TAX FREE purchase :)
So that's what you get.
Nope, that's called competition. Consumers rarely complain of price dropping too low (grin).
In reality most 'big box' stores are no cheaper (usually more expensive) than the ma and pa store down the road. Walmart is probably the only exception because of some of their business practices.
yeah you are prob writing this on a comp with parts made in china
IF YOU DONT LIKE STUFF MADE IN CHINA THEN MAKE YO OWN SH*T
Current Bureau of Labor Statistics employment figures for September of 2009:
154,006,000 employed in the United States
How many people does Walmart employ in the United states?
1,200,000
Which is less than 1%. Which is considerably less than the 50% our friend is touting (50% is "half", SilentSkies2889, in case you're having difficulty with the math).
Let's talk about people having jobs now. Recent studies have shown that WalMart has driven the wages of retail employees down by 4.7 *billion* dollars. There are 31 pending lawsuits against WalMart for wage and hour abuses.
And lets not even get into the billions of dollars of public subsidies (those are "welfare" or "handouts" to you, SilentSkies2889) that WalMart receives. Or the numerous businesses of hardworking Americans that go under when a WalMart sets up nearby.
And Microsoft is left wing? What ARE you smoking??
Sorry about your luck, as in your town there most likely aren't any other jobs so you have work at WALMART.
How pathetic is that? I live in the south where the retail giant has ruined communities with their bully tactics and leaving unoccupied buildings on every corner. Unfortunatley people are forced to shop there as all the other stores are forced to close. I choose Amazon.com or other online retailers 99% of the time.
Maybe that's why they're trying to sell more online.
Unfortunately, Wal-Mart's price reduction methods may mean the eReader hardware company they select would be forced to make a piece of junk in order to keep the price low.
2. All retailers get product from China.
3. Capitalism is what American is built on.
4. Wal-Mart wages are competative with other retailers in the industry.
5. Most Wal-Mart employers are happy with there jobs.
6. There is great oppertunity at Wal-Mart for advancement.
7. It is unlikely that a union would benifit Wal-Mart associates or any buissness for that matter.
8. The negative impact on smaller buissnesses to the economy is washed out by the lower prices
recieved by Wal-Mart shoppers.
9. Wal-Mart is simply better than everybody else at running an efficient and profitable buissness.
- by Dexter6942 October 19, 2009 9:07 AM PDT
- sscorp99
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (45 Comments)Since you are so concerned about spelling I must point out that you misspelled unfortunately as unfortunatley a few post back.