Marketing the New Venture 245Making a Difference on the Web
It’s the kind of store the Internet was sup-
posed to eliminate—a ma-and-pa brick-and-
mortar retailer selling low-margin cameras,
computers, VCRs, and music equipment.
But 35-year-old J & R Electronics
(www.jr.com) has managed to survive the
onslaught of the Web by finding ways to
transfer the experience customers have when
they visit its Manhattan store in person to the
experience customers have when they shop
online.
For example, J & R posts a picture of its
physical store on its home page, and includes
different exterior and interior shots of the
store on other main pages. It links photos
from store-sponsored events, like appear-
ances by athletes or rock stars, to its Web
site, and does occasional live Web casts.
“We tried to re-create the feel of our brick-
and-mortar store,” says co-owner, Rachel
Friedman about the things the company has
done to make virtual shopping more con-
crete.
While other Internet stores have a toll-free
phone number for customer assistance, J &
R lists over a dozen of its salespeople by
name on its Web site, and provides each
salesperson’s direct extension, days and
hours each is in the store, area of expertise,
number of years on staff, along with a brief
biography. This practice allows cyber-cus-
tomers to request advice from a knowl-
edgable salesperson when they make their
toll-free call.
Before it started selling on the Web, J & R
had an established reputation in the New
York metropolitan area, and had been a cata-
log merchant for some time. But the firm had
trouble differentiating itself from all the other
Internet electronics retailers. To attract more
customers, J & R became one of the first
companies to partner with Amazon.com, Inc.
When customers shop for an MP3 player or a
computer-printer on http://www.Amazon.com, J &
R is one of the merchants they can select to
fulfill their order (the company is identified on
Amazon as J & R Music and Computer World
Storefront). “The Amazon partnership is a
great way for J & R to build brand identity
and brand familiarity,” observes Donna
Hoffman, codirector of the Sloan Center for
Internet Retailing at Vanderbilt University.
“People think ‘If it’s on Amazon, it must be
good’.” Amazon collects and posts customer
feedback about J & R, which helps build the
store’s Web reputation. The company’s
arrangement with Amazon also allowed J & R
to rely on Amazon’s Web page and order-
processing technology, rather than struggle
with its own in-house software when it first
started selling on the Web. “Especially for
smaller companies, it’s better to license tech-
nology that’s already been tested, and to let
someone else put a billion dollars behind it,”
says Drew Sharma, managing director of an
Internet marketing agency called Mindfire
Interactive. “If you can stand on the shoul-
ders of giants, then why not?” The electronics
company also has deals with other Web sites
in which it pays a commission on sales that
affiliate sites refer.
J & R still sends out catalogs and does a
lot of newspaper advertising in the New York
City area, which was its primary marketing
target before it began selling on the Internet.
Vanderbilt’s Donna Hoffman notes that many
customers shop both online and offline for a
product before making a purchase, and sug-
gests the links between these two methods
will be the “next frontier” of Internet growth.
SOURCE: Adapted from Andrew Blackman, “A Strong Net
Game,” The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2004.
Retrieved from the Web February 22, 2006.
http://online.wsj.com/article_print?SB10983753427725193
4.html, http://www.jr.comand http://www.amazon.com.DISCUSSION CASE