This month Amazon’s new tablet the Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet go on-sale this month. While both products are technically the house brand of competing retails, they’ll be widely available in a variety of retail channels. One would typically presume that a consumer interested in the Kindle Fire would just go to Amazon.com to make the purchase while someone interested in the Nook tablet would go to BN.com or a B&N store.
In fact, shoppers like to compare – even when they think they’ve made up their mind. A series of new tablet offerings – both garning strong media buzz – is a positive for retailers. While it is always difficult for a retailer to make margin selling what is a akin to the house brand of their competitors, the introduction of several competing devices creates a catalyst for consumers to enter into stores and compare. This will help drive traffic, potential sales of the devices, but even more important is sales of the higher-margin accessories. With the significant decline in physical media, several other elements are becoming traffic drivers. Today’s hottest hardware devices are now traffic drives. Confusion or multiple available selections within a category are also key traffic drivers.
