What WiFi Means for Your Christmas Shopping
It must be dead of summer and difficult to find much Christmas to talk about. But trust me — this is really big Christmas news. It comes from the Queen Mother of all retailers: Walmart, who also does business as Sam’s Club (which is just a Costco that takes Mastercard).
While most of the retail world is awash in end of summer clearance events and back to school specials Sam’s dropped a bomb that is sure to be felt in the early morning rampages of Black Friday. Just in time for the holiday season Sam’s will have free WiFi in all their stores.
What — that doesn’t give you chills?
Time to reach your inner-geek, folks. It is important to see why the world of retailing is gasping at this news and betting you’ll be at Sam’s this holiday shopping season.
First, even in a recessionary environment electronics remain the sexy gift. From iPhones to printers, every imaginable kind of electronic gizmo needs constant upgrading. There is always something better, faster, sharper or more connected than before to have. And if it connects to the Internet, folks especially have to have it.
Think about it.
Video games are no longer a plug-in-a-cartridge gizmo. All of them now feature real-time over-the-Internet game play.
Telephones don’t plug into the wall anymore – they plug into your router. Take a look at Ooma and see what it will do to your traditional land-line phone bill. You’ll never go back if you have always-on Internet in your house.
And then there is television and that is where Sam’s is betting the big money in electronics will be.
Internet on your TV? Youbetcha. Most flat screen televisions are nothing more than computer monitors on steroids. They are dying for data feeds. Blu-Ray players are coming “WiFi-enabled” now so that firmware updates are instant and a pipeline for feeding you previews and promotions never runs dry. Video on demand – the kind NetFlix just plunked $1 billion (with a “b”) down for streaming movies – means an ever endless list of watching what you want when you want without buying a disc or even heading out to a video kiosk.
Oh — and don’t forget the 3-D technology craze that’s coming. All the new TVs are going to have it and even this Christmas movie producers are fighting over which movies will have first dibs in 3-D theaters. Seems there are more 3-D movies than there are screens to show them on. And why are they making so many 3-D movies? Because people pay more to see them, to own them on disc and to stream them into their living rooms to their new 3-D TVs.
But getting back to Sam’s: these televisions they want to sell will require the Internet just to showcase what they can do.
But WiFi gives Sam’s some other neat capabilities as well that will not be available at any other discounter. For example, walk around Sam’s with your WiFi enabled Smartphone and you can compare prices both online and offline in the palm of your hand. In fact, there are apps that allow you to simply scan the barcode on any given item and it will search the Internet for the best price closest to you.
Scary, huh?
It could be. But scarier for Sam’s then it will be for you. For example, it is conceivable that you could find a great item you want via Sam’s free bandwidth only to discover that you have to “act now” to get the deal…and find yourself making the buy via cyberspace from the floor of Sam’s from a competitor.
So, yeah. WiFi in a warehouse club store is a big deal on a variety of levels. From these spanking new televisions to boring old wireless laptops there’s going to be a lot of surfing going on come Black Friday.
