Second To None

The Next Chapter in the Book-Price War

By Kerry Colligan

Amazon, Walmart and Target are now limiting purchases of discounted pre-release books. Two weeks ago, the retailers began selling heavily discounted pre-release titles from Stephen King, John Grisham, Dean Koontz and James Patterson. The latest move is designed to prevent other booksellers from scooping up discounted copies.

Off-Target

Amid the 68% discounts, I'm wondering who the winners and losers might be. Amazon and Walmart have long-standing customer relationships built on price-based value. For them, the book war appears to be a volume issue where the real winners may be the publishers/authors as Amazon and Walmart slug it out.

Target is a different story. Loyal Target customers put product quality ahead of price. If they didn't, they’d be Kmart/Walmart customers. Target's brand promise isn't low price. Getting mired in the price-war could temporarily change customer perception.

It's surprising that Target is engaging in the price war. We've all heard the retail doom-and-gloom forecasts for the holiday season. Regardless, isn't maintenance of the brand more important? For Target, a more intelligent move may have been packaging the pre-release books with other same-author books/content to entice a larger purchase.

Update

On 11/4, Amazon extended their discounts to at least two books already released.

Brand Strategy