The price isn't displayed - you see the standard/printed price on the book itself (i.e. $25 in usa) and then take it to one of several little stations that tells you the current price on Amazon ($16.94 or whatever, you save X amount). You can also scan barcodes on each little review placard with the app and it'll pull up the price.
Not ideal, I'll allow, but since the prices fluctuate there's not an easy way to do it without looooots of digital signage.
Digital signage would also produce some level of shopping anxiety as it could lead to situations where customers saw prices of books change automatically while on the shelves.
I'm there right now and loving it!!! It's fun scanning the books and seeing the price be so much cheaper than the suggested retail. The selection is massively more interesting and less stale than other bookstores. Also very seattle oriented.
This seems so backwards. Amazon lead on cheap prices. But this retail store only displays book/listed price. Which are higher. The only way to get the real price is to manually scan each one. Why? What am I missing?
Perhaps for the mass-market titles but once you start pushing into the long-tail then RRP becomes much more common.
Couple of random examples from Amazon UK this morning:
You Save: £0.72 (2%)
You Save: £0.55 (2%)
I doubt many people will see savings like that as incentives. Rather, Amazon's advantage is that they actually offer such books for sale without the hassles of persuading a clerk to order a single copy for you, assuming their supplier carries it.
