Buy.com sees book revenue soar as it undercuts Amazon.com pricing
Buy.com reports that within the first 24 hours of its announcement that it would drop its book prices to 10% below Amazon’s prices, it increased its book revenue by more than 800% over the previous 30-day daily average. Buy.com also nearly tripled its daily average of new customers on the first day of the offer.
“Buy.com has called customer loyalty into question,” says Robert Price, president and chief financial officer. “It’s the overall package that customers seem to be looking for: lowest prices free shipping, largest selection and excellent customer service.”
Buy.com, which has been better known among consumers as a shopping site for consumer electronics, is making a serious play for the online book market and says it hopes to make the offer of 10% off Amazon prices permanent. The company says it’s also considering extending similar discount offers into others product categories. The move broadens Buy.com`s ongoing price war with Amazon and follows its announcement last week that it would drop shipping charges on most of its products. Price says the free shipping policy already has had an impact, increasing the number of orders by 30% and average order size by more than 20%.
The discounted pricing and free shipping are a bid to move more of Amazon’s traffic and sales to Buy.com, whose numbers are dwarfed by Amazon’s. According to ComScore Networks, Buy.com was the 64th most visited retail site in the U.S., receiving 2.4 million unique visitors in May, while Amazon, with 30.0 million visitors that month, ranked second in traffic only to eBay.com. In April, Amazon.com ranked fourth in online consumer sales among U.S. sites, according to ComScore, while Buy.com ranked below 30.
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