Retailers' Hobson's choice: crushed by Amazon or exploited by Google

It’s no secret that during the e-commerce era, the local (and even chain) retailer has lost its hold over local customers — particularly in the face of an ever-expanding variety of online merchandise, first from Amazon and later from the clicks-and-mortar chain retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, the tyranny of the local newspaper has been replaced by the tyranny of the search engines (i.e. Google) in controlling the ability of retailers to get their message to potential customers.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports that retailers are facing a Hobson’s choice of being exploited by Google to avoid being crushed by Amazon. (Merriam-Webster defines a Hobson‘s choice as “the necessity of accepting one of two or more equally objectionable alternatives”).

The report says that to capture more product search — advertising and purchases — Google is testing a “buy” button for its search results to reduce the number of searches that begin on Amazon:

In the third quarter, 39% of U.S. online shoppers began researching their purchases on Amazon and only 11% started on search engines like Google, according to Forrester Research . That’s a reversal from 2009, when 24% started on search engines and 18% on Amazon.
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“Amazon is increasingly running away with online retail in North America, which poses a huge problem for Google,” said Jeremy Levine, an e-commerce investor at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Google has to get in front of this and create a reasonable alternative.”

That Google chose to fight back is not surprising, nor is it surprising that it did so without consulting retailers. Given its data-driven culture, it’s also not surprising that it ran a live experiment. However, the nature of the experiment alarmed some retailers:

Retailers’ concerns about Google’s initiative were heightened in November when digital-marketing agency RKG spotted an unannounced Google test. Google users searching for “anthropologie,” the women’s clothing retailer owned by Urban Outfitters Inc., were also shown a link to a Google Shopping page with dozens of the retailer’s product ads. Anthropologie didn’t give its permission, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Or as search engine guru Larry Kim explained:

Is Google Shopping Becoming A Competitor To Retailers?

Based on this test, it would appear that's a real possibility.

Essentially, this would cut out the middleman and drive searchers to make their purchasing decisions within Google Shopping. It adds competition to what began as a branded search – rather than being presented with David Yurman rings for sale by David Yurman, the searcher sees David Yurman rings for sale at Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's and other retail sites.

If Google adopts this test as a permanent feature, it has the potential to drive up CPC's for branded search terms, as people searching for a particular type of product from a specific brand will now be presented with competitor options, as well.

Further, users can do comparison shopping right within Google Shopping, without having to go the retailers’ websites, whether they were searching for a specific retailer/brand or not. It’s another example of Google stealing traffic from your website, like they do with Knowledge Graph and vertical results like weather and flight comparisons.

This could be a welcome change for searchers; this is why Google runs all these tests. But advertisers may be annoyed to learn that searches on their brand name are being used to drive traffic to Google Shopping. … As for advertisers, I’m pretty sure they won't appreciate Google creating competition for them where it didn't exist before.

In this regard, Google is seeking revenue growth by taking traffic from those who created the content it indexed. It doesn’t have to integrate to generate the content or be able to fulfill orders, but instead can control the eyeballs (selling more ads and having more stickiness) while commoditizing retailers.

So in a fight for Total World Domination (or at least North American retail domination), Google will take away visibility and revenue from its most profitable customers.

Why does Google do this? Because it can. It’s not quite a monopoly, but it’s almost without viable competition: in the US, it has a 3:1 market share lead over its nearest competitor on PCs, and a 5:1 lead in mobile. In Europe, it has a nearly 10:1 lead, which is prompting calls for competition authorities to end its vertical integration.

The web brings a scale to retailing that never existing in the turn of the century (or Calvin Coolidge) Main Street USA era. Local retailers (and their commercial landlords) will continue to pay the price.