Harry Potter and the Deathly Discounts
My, my what a book can do to the local book distribution scene.
Four local book stores have banded together to boycott the sales of JK Rowling's latest (and last?) Harry Potter instalment claiming that distributor Penguin Books indiscriminately allowed this season's arguably's hottest title to be sold by hypermarkets.
The recommended retail price was supposed to be RM109.90 but hypermarkets Tesco and Carrefour saw it as a unique opportunity to drive volume and discounted the price to just RM69.90, wiping a clean RM40 off the cover price.
So were the bookstores right in doing this? I'm not a Harry Potter fan so to me, this is a simple case of market efficiencies at work and the two hypermarkets doing what they do best - work on a cost-leadership strategy and bring products at an aggressive price to its consumers. I don't really like cartels, and thus am not really in favour of the bookstores' joint action - it stands against free market principles and just comes out looking like a lot of sour grapes.
Even the government has now come out in support of the hypermarkets. An unusual stand as hypermarkets are usually seen as the bad guys bullying small suffering local retailers. I suspect that because none of the protesting bookstores are owned by UMNO cronies, made the government stand a relatively easy one.
Who would have thought the boy wizard could have conjured up such a dizzy spell in the usually languid book retailing business.
posted by hew @ 9:58 pm
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