The Search for Wikinomics Continues
On my way home today, I decided to stop in at the Chapters on Rideau St. and see if I could pick up a copy of Don Tapscott’s new book Wikinomics. A quick check on the Book Search terminal, and I discover there’s 19 copies in the store. “Great! I’m in luck.” Off I go to the Business / Business Technology section, and the book is no where to be found. A helpful Chapters employee asks if they can help and point me in the general direction and mention that it’s displayed quite openly - and therefore one would think it easy to find. I scan all of the Business sections I can think of, check the Technology section, and happen to glance at another Book Search terminal which someone has left on the Wikinomics search result as well. I have competition. As I walk past another Chapters employee, I overhear that another individual is also looking for the book, and that she is unable to help him find it. Another quick scan of the shelves, and I leave empty handed.
Would it be so difficult to tag each book with an RFID tag and then place a mesh network of RFID transmitters on each shelf so as to keep track of every book within the store passively. A Book Search would display exactly where each book was located within the store, and avoid the ridiculousness that was today’s bookstore experience. I’ve slowly stopped going into Chapters/Indigo as much as I used to as they either tend not to carry the book I’m looking for, or its simply too hard to find a title.
Update: As you may have noticed from the comments, both the Rideau Store Manager, and Heather Reisman have been in contact offering to right the situation.
The main problem is money.
RFID tags are currently 20 to 40 cents a piece, and with the massive in-store inventory and turnaround of a typical giant bookstore, they could burn through a lot of cash to implement this feature. Even if they could do it and still make a profit, I’m not sure if the benefits would be worth the cut margins.
The readers are not so cheap either, and one on every shelf would add up as well!
The other annoyance is that RFID readers are not perfect, so occasionally books would go “missing” in a real-world implementation.
My impression of Chapters/Indigo is that they are poor for book “hunters”, but more suited for people who are in a browsing mood, to discover something they might not think about. I’m not sure whether or not management has figured this out, though.
Good points Ian. It would definitely take a drastic decrease in the cost of RFID tags, and a slight advance in the technology - something more akin to Dust Networks implementation, and the insertion of some sort of standardized identifier (RFID or dust) at the publisher/printing level for something like this to be cost effective.
I’d still like to build a proof of concept for fun, if anything, just to have some experience with RFID implementation.
Hello Chris,
first I sincerely apologize for the negative experience you recently faced here at Chapters Rideau.As a major Canadian retailer we are always striving to offer exceptional customer service,unfortuneately in this case we did not live upto that standard.After researching when we had actually received Wikinomics it appears that all copies were shelved on the main level.Our merchandizing standards are that minimally two copies should also be placed in the subsection it belongs to,obviously this was an error on our part and subsequently we did not locate the book in an efficient manner.Chris I would like the opportunity to restore your faith in Chapters Rideau and offer you a gift certificate to thank you for this feedback.Could you please provide me with an alternate means to contact you,perhaps a phone #, as I would like to discuss this further.
Thank you in advance
Tim Francoeur
General Manager
Chapters Rideau
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