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Comment by shurcooL | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting and indicative of a bigger problem.

Why isn't it most profitable for the stores to provide the best experience for customers in order to be most profitable?

Suppose there are two stores:

- Store A. Offers decent experience for the customer.

- Store B. Offers much better experience for the customer.

One would naively expect and hope that, given those two choices, more people would prefer to go to the better Store B and hence it would be more profitable. Hence the stores would try to do their best to serve the customer interests.

Why is it instead more optimal for stores not to optimize for the happiness of its customers?

Could it be because customers are not adept at recognizing which stores offer better experience for them, _and rewarding_ such stores by preferring them over other stores?

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These are only speculations, but here are points based on my own habits:

1) The most important criterion for me when looking for a store, is walking distance. I don't want to bike, or drive to the store. So the closest store is almost guaranteed to win my business.

2) The second most important criterion is the price. I'm still a student so I'm a bit careful with my spending. So if a store is much much cheaper, and not too much further, then I might go there when I have big errands to run.

3) I am pretty much insensitive to the layout of the store. I'm already walking 10-15 minutes to get there, so 30 seconds between milk and bread is no problem really

Anyway, my point is that in my case, the reason why the "better" store doesn't win is that I don't really care about the criterion used to define it as "better". So going back to your point, a store doesn't have anything to do to serve my interest other than being close to my apartment and lowering the prices. The rest is almost totally irrelevant to me.

You are assuming that the customer is you, the schlub with the iPhone, are the customer in mind here. It isn't -- product merchandising in stores isn't rocket science. Any decent retail manager handles this stuff just fine and Wal-Mart has been able to track merchandising effectiveness using the registers for like 25 years now.

The customer here is the product manufacturers and distributors, and the product is shelf space. In big box and department stores, strategic shelves like end caps and the area near the escalators are paid placements.

Ditto for the supermarket. Ever notice that in different chains, Coke or Pepsi is always either in the front or back of the store across locations? That's because they bid on the preferred location.

Retailers are focusing on stuff like this because most mass retailers have unsustainable business models and aren't making money at the core job - selling stuff to people.

While I don't have evidence, I think it's reasonable to postulate that store A is able to offer the same products as store B at a lower price due to being able to offset it with the extra revenue earned from people having to walk across the store and buying additional products that they would not have otherwise. While you (and I) might value our time over saving 50 cents on a loaf of bread, a significant portion of the population would rather spend 50 cents less on a loaf of bread and be forced to walk across the store. For other people, the better experience might be saving 50 cents, whereas for you it's saving time.

Same thing with Google and TV commercials. For some people, privacy and security and saving time is a better experience, but for most, saving a few dollars here and there is a better experience.

And going even further, why don't customers punish the stores that give shitty customer by no longer shopping there? Same goes for your ISP, politician, etc... We have short memories.

ISPs = Not many people have a choice. My Parents can get Verizon DSL or Comcast Cable. Not really a "competitive choice".

Politicians = It takes time. Once they are elected terms last a long time and then people often have to choose a "new evil"... They can't just say welp, I don't support you anymore that'll solve the problem.

I think part of it is that there's no real venue for customers to express their satisfaction to other prospective customers. If I find a store relatively well-laid-out, convenient, and friendly, I don't have a lot of opportunities to evangelize that store, even if I want to, because my legitimate actual real customer opinion gets crowded out by and blends in with astro-turfers. Sure I can talk it up to my friends, but that's not really a common topic of conversation.

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