Page 88 - Security Today, September 2018

How to Protect Your Business from Amazon
If you think Amazon isn’t a threat to you, think again
BIy Scott Lindley
f you think your dealership isn’t conducive to outside pressures, ask the merchants of Smalltown, USA, about that new Walmart going up on the outskirts of the municipality. Walmart has been like the Grimm Reaper to local business whose names have been written over storefronts of Norman Rockwell appearing down-
towns, in many cases, for several generations. No more Hickey-Kent Furniture or Schulz Brothers Five and Ten. Parker’s Bakery—gone. Even the local Piggly Wigley and the A&P grocery stores closed. The town has a score of deserted store facilities while local shoppers are parked by the scores at the local behemoth out at the city limits, all searching for those lower prices and everything under one roof.
If you think Amazon is not having a similar affect, check any lo- cal shopping mall. Stop in at Circuit City or Borders Books. Death by Amazon, who is finishing off retail chain stores like Walmart glut- ted small businesses. Ask your friends who own a residential security businesses if they are seeing Amazon showing up in their markets. They are.
But, you argue, your security enterprise is a business-to-business
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(B2B) organization. You’re safe. Not true, argues Brian Beck, senior vice president of e-commerce and omni-channel strategy at Guid- ance, an e-commerce design and development agency, writing in Digi- tal Commerce 360 (July 24, 2017).
“Amazon is investing heavily in enabling business buyers to pur- chase online using the same tools and user experiences these same buyers have become accustomed to as consumers in shopping for their personal purchases on Amazon.com,” Beck explains. “The com- pany calls this Amazon Business and they are executing right now to digitally support traditional B2B workflows and customers’ purchas- ing expectations.”
Forester Research certainly supports his statement, “As of Q1 2017, almost 40 percent of B2B buyers are finishing their purchases on Amazon. In 2015, the percentage of B2B buyers that said they fin- ished their purchases on distributor sites was 30 percent. In 2017, just two years later, that number has plummeted to 16 percent. Buyers are flocking to sites that are easy to use, fast, with broad selection, lim- ited login requirements, and built-in trust. Amazon does these things
ONLINE SECURITY
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