Shopping centres and supermarkets in UK now facilitate Amazon "showrooming", undermining themselves / their tenants

Post date: Mar 7, 2016 3:02:04 PM

If you go to the Oracle in Reading, Berkshire, UK or the Wellington Centre in Aldershot, Hants, UK you will find Amazon Lockers in these shopping centres. These allow customers to pick up their Amazon orders at a time that's convenient for them from lockers in town centre locations.

The Aldershot locker has been there for a few years now and I noticed that Waterstones bookshop opposite the locker in the Oracle in Reading in the photo below closed soon after its arrival. Maybe it was a protest by Waterstones (who have another shop 5 minutes away)?

This may be considered to facilitate "showrooming" by Amazon customers at these shopping centres, directly undermining the tenants of the shopping centres, many of whom compete with Amazon. It also importantly undermines the business of the shopping centre landlord, selling space to 'bricks and mortar' retailers.

"Showrooming" is the practice of consumers examining products in a traditional brick and mortar retail store "in the real world", and then buying it online, often at a lower price. This is as e-commerce sites can often offer lower prices than their brick and mortar counterparts because they do not have the same overheads such as prime retail locations like the Welly Centre in Aldershot :)

I have recently noticed a locker at Morrisons in Aldershot too (see photo below). After partnering on Amazon Pantry, the supermarket chain has revealed in September 2016 plans to open hundreds of Amazon Lockers inside its stores. In my view Morrisons are not a digital savvy business in the slightest and they will be quickly undermined from various angles by the shark that is Amazon!

Soon the University of Surrey will have 4 Amazon Lockers: https://www.facebook.com/surreyunion/posts/10154252209187034:0.

If your local shopping centre or supermarket soon becomes an enormous Amazon Locker you have only yourself to blame (as well as the landlords of the shopping centres and the owners of Morrisons). The date of the Death of the High Street is your hands...

See also http://www.seolondonsurrey.co.uk/blog/should-town-centre-offering-free-wifi-block-amazon