Don't they get it?

My wife and I recently purchased a Samsung PN50A550 television. The purchase made me think about store retailers vs. online retailers in general. When I looked at the particular model in a local Circuit City, it was priced at about $1440. This was after a 30% discount. Add 10% Cook county sales tax and it would be about $1580. On top of that, they didn't have any left in the manufacturer's box so if you wanted to buy it, you had to take the one on the shelf. If there was a problem with the unit, you would have to take it up with the manufacturer because the store was going out of business. Needless to say, I had hesitations. Nevertheless, I liked what I saw and it was in the $1500 price range that my wife and I were shooting for.

I held off and went home to check out the online prices. I found the same model at amazon.com for about $1490. No sales tax, no shipping costs. If there were any problems with the unit it could be returned up through January 31 with the shipping completely paid for. It looked like the amazon.com deal was better in every way over Circuit City. Poor Circuit City had to pay for the sales staff, inventory, the building, and other general upkeep costs in order to entice me to buy from them. So, I freely enjoyed the benefit of their showroom and setup, but the benefit of amazon.com's price. Doesn't Circuit City (or any brick and mortar store) know this is happening? What are they doing to combat it? I looked into the price a bit and found out that amazon.com had been selling the unit at this price for several months. Circuit City had to go through a bankruptcy liquidation sale in order to lower their price 30% to come close to being competitive.

I can understand the Circuit City price being a little higher due to costs, but their pre-discounted price wasn't even in the ballpark. Consumers are being more educated and the internet is not going away anytime soon. It will be interesting to see how the competition develops.