Originally Posted by
RTDub
To clarify, I originally agreed with the phrase in a post stating that a bike shop is not a garage sale. Part of how Capitalism works is that many merchants may sell the same exact item for a different price, and the seller pays what the market will bear. This also means the customer should participate by actually shopping, not making the merchant pay for the customer's lack of responsibility in the process. Where would it end? Would you haggle price at a grocery store? Radio Shack? Dunkin Donuts? Your tax preparer? Your doctor?
Can't wait for the BF crowd to start posting their exceptions to the above
Point is, there is enough lamentation from shop owners on this very site that struggle to get by. Narrowing your margin by 'keeping' customers by offering unpublished discounts is taking money right out of their pocket. Bikes Direct has this part right - offer a bike at a price that is non-negotiable, but is already at a value price that renders haggling moot. I also understand that the online marketing model requires less overhead than a storefront, but if a LBS is willing to go down 10% just by being asked, and they can afford to do that, just discount everything 10% and be done with it. Watch the customers line up, if this is what a discount really does.
The idea isn't to give everyone discounts, the idea is to sell to every customer at the highest price they will pay until your profit margin disappears. By having the customers that can afford it pay MSRP up front, and have customers that would otherwise not buy a bike haggle a bit of a discount, the bike shop is capturing the largest amount of value out of it's market.
If they gave a discount to everyone, they are minimizing the amount of market value they can get. The advantage that a real store has over the internet is that they can actually talk and deal with their customers. You can't haggle with bikes direct, so they get your business by just cutting the margins down. Certainly, there are some people who if they didn't know better would buy BD bikes at double the price they sell them at (perhaps they do under different brand names), and BD would certainly like to sell to those people at that price, but it's not feasible on the internet where prices have to be laid out.