Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Last week, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) said their concern was really about the inequity of the state tax system, suggesting that by selling within stores, Amazon was making a mockery of the rules that allow it to not charge sales tax while inside a store that has to. It was a very fair point.

Senator Snowe’s statement, while missing the mark on the specifics, was trying to communicate a broader point, said Snowe Communications Director Chris Averill. Namely that the “whole purpose of the (promotion) was suspect” and that the price-spying and the incentives were married in what Amazon put out publicly, which is true. It was only in the fine-print of the Terms and Conditions that the exclusions and limitations became clear, he said.

Even though Amazon excluded bookstores, Averill said, “chances are (shoppers) went to the bookstore to get the extra discount.” The lack of any incentive for books wouldn’t be clear until much later, if the customer even noticed.

As our Legal Columnist, Mark Rasch, pointed out in this week’s column, Amazon engaged in this “send people to stores to get sales and information” strategy while it is one of the few E-tailers that bans others from doing the same to it.

How is this campaign truly different from ones where retailers match—or better—coupons from rivals? If Amazon’s customers want to pass along pricing information for free to Amazon merely because Amazon asked them to, that may be strange, but it’s hardly unethical. By the way, the point of the price-comparison app is such that it will help local merchants, as long as their prices are indeed lower than Amazon’s. Amazon’s prices have never been that low—it pushes convenience, not savings—so this could end up helping brick-and-mortars. And if they are indeed charging a lot more than Amazon, don’t they deserve to lose that sale, especially for customers willing to wait for shipments and to pay—where necessary—for shipping charges?

Retailers need to compete—and they absolutely can win—by pushing attributes that can’t be so easily matched by online rivals: better pricing, immediate gratification, enjoyable shopping experience, ease-of-returns, friendly and helpful store associates, and products that can’t be obtained elsewhere. If a retailer loses a sale because someone offering its customer one dollar off a $20 purchase—when it’s a lot easier to walk up to the POS than to manually enter pricing and go through the rest of the Amazon mobile process—that may be a sale that deserved to be lost.