I only buy my kitchen ware from William Sonoma. It has nothing to do with price (although I do price compare prior to purchase) it has to do with a life time guarnatee.

First of all, thank you for the compliments and for subscribing to Profy. And unfortunately you are quite right – professional blogging rarely leaves time for anything but blogging itself but that’s my choice so I’m quite fine with it

Back to ShopSavvy, I mostly talk to Alexander from the team, he sends comments about the product my way. By the way, they recently reported on their blog that Best Buy can possibly do a price match for products found cheaper elsewhere using the application. It could be one case only but this could be an indication for the future.

It is most definitely a compliment (assuming that blogging allows you to live a normal life outside of the virtual one ). I have added you to my reader and make your content part of my daily review.

Yes, we are in agreement that some % of shoppers might change their behavior and delay or habits. It is certainly disruptive of the current shopping cycle.

Who do you correspond with at ShopSavvy?

Mike

I am not assuming that all the purchase decisions are made based on price as we would never have any luxury stores where people are ready to pay higher for the comfort they get. But I think that for the people who are willing to download an application like this and will start using it, price will act as an important factor – because if price does not matter you would stick to your traditional shopping experience. And some people will definitely develop a new habit of comparing for better prices and also sometimes opting for an online purchase when the price is much better and the purchase is not that urgent so the delivery time required is bearable.

And your idea for this revenue source is certainly excellent, you should definitely offer it to the guys from ShopSavvy, they will probably appreciate it.

You are one “blogging animal”, not only having time to write so many articles, but post here as well…THANKS!

It will have some impact on shopping behavior but it is evolutionary and is no different than the pattern over the last 10 years. Bricks and mortar have not gone away despite the often large pricing differentials.

You are assuming though that all shopping is based on a price rationale and that purchasers will always gravitate to the lower price. If that were in fact the reality in the real world you would only find one price instead of the huge variation we do find….I find reality to be much messier than that Milton Friedman view of things.

One interesting way for ShopSavvy to make money AND overcome bricks and mortar “resentments” would be to offer a real time, place based (GPS determined) coupon for the item from the store in which the shopper is looking….ie they are in Target, find a better price at Amazon but a Target coupon (based on location) is also shown….

Mike

As for offline retailers not to pay anything through affiliate programs, I think it will not hurt as I suppose ShopSavvy will also teach many consumers to choose a product they like in real life in a brick and mortar store – and then buying it online where the price will be significantly better. Though I admit I have no certain ideas on how they will make money for now.

Thanks for stopping by (again) and providing information. The affiliate model has some merit but doesn’t speak to the offline purchase. I suppose that they could have some pay to play model which affected ranking or presentation as well although that might compromise the results.

It seems to me that much shopping is based on subconscious processes. This seems to elevate the act to a thinking process. I wonder how widely the behavior can/will be adopted across the general population…will hockey mom’s search out this app and install it once they have the phone that can use it? (oh no, I forgot, they’ll just have the RNC pay for it )

Mike