Sears & Penney’s Gain On Amazon.com, Netflix

CNN.com is reporting that during this last Christmas Season, Amazon.com and Netflix.com received greater competition from formerly “brick and mortar only” competitors like Sears.com and JCPenney.com…”If these traditional multi-channel retailers can keep focused on the customer and continue to achieve these types of improvements, they will [become] a tough set of competitors for the pure-play online retailers…” one analyst said.

Sears, Penney’s, Wal-Mart, and Blockbuster have the advantage of having brick and mortar sales locations for shoppers who just happen to be passing by in their car and who aren’t online. If they can beef up their online capacity, Amazon.com and Netflix.com and other purely internet businesses may see the erosion of their marketplace.

Amazon.com still retains – according to the report – a unique competitive advantage because it has developed into not only an online retail outlet but is also considered a viable website for making price comparisons online if they are able to monetize the traffic that just comes to “comparison shop”.

In the work at home marketplace? Some lessons for us include

1. If selling locally, diversify online

2. If selling online, diversify locally

3. Use Amazon.com as a research tool to estimate the viability of your online pricing. If you cannot meet the prices of your competition, you must use strategies like bundling or value added premiums to offset competition that’s based purely on price.