I am not sure if this is sui generis, if it’s even accurate, but this discussion in the Economist does raise an interesting question:
Britain’s brick-burdened retailers may be heartened, though, by the example of Dixons Retail, owner of Britain’s biggest electronics and computer retailers, Currys and PC World, and of similar chains in other countries. Between 15% and 20% of sales at Dixons are online, depending on the season, and the proportion is rising. But Dixons thinks the advantages which online-only merchants get by doing away with shops and sales staff are undercut by the need to pay more than high-street shops do to acquire customers (largely by paying Google for clicks on adverts) and to spend a lot on shipping. So instead of doing away with shops and sales staff, Dixons is trying to get more out of them.
Maybe the value in offline retail is to get consumers to your online site, without having to pay for expensive Google Adwords or other online acquisition techniques.
Another reason why Amazon is so well-positioned in the US. It has a much lower consumer acquisition cost than competing retailers because so many customers (30%) start their online product searches there. See here.
takingpitches 