The following is a reprint of a Press Release that has not yet happened:
May 28, 2013
The “Surf The River, Shop The Stream” boycott of Amazon.com, organized by the American Association of Small Businesses some 18 months ago has been declared a smashing success by Scott Independence, President of the AASB.
“This is a program we had started in December of 2011 in response to Amazon's 'Price Check App' promotion where they bribed customers with the promise of $5 coupons if they went into any store and did a comparative price check through a mobile device bar code scanning program,” said Independence. “As much business as an online price-slashing retail powerhouse such as Amazon had already sapped from traditional brick and mortar stores, we felt at the time that this new program took the concept of aggressive price competitiveness to an unacceptable place. It attempted to turn the general public into spies against the small businesses that are the proverbial bread and butter of the American economy, basically bribing all consumers to reinforce the ongoing devaluation of the nation's retail economy to unsustainable levels.
Some of the Small Business members of the AASB came to a realization that it would be more constructive to encourage their customers and the public at large to visit Amazon rather than avoid the site. “We figured it would be a losing battle to try to get people to boycott the most trafficked site on the internet,” says Independence. “It is, after all, a tremendously thorough and comprehensive data base of retail information. We did, however, realize that through a variety of education programs we could illustrate the harmful nature to both the world's economy and free choice in general of one single business entity siphoning off more and more sales from the traditional retail economy. What we instead chose to ask our customers and the public to do was a bit of a payback for the 'browse in store/shop online' manner of poaching that's been going on more and more in recent years. We simply encourage folks to fully utilize Amazon's thorough database to gather information about products, but to take an extra click or two after that to buy elsewhere, even if there is a modest price differential.”
The full name of the program- although it is still a work in progress according to Scott- is "Surf The River, Shop The Stream, Price Isn't Everything, If You Know What I Mean". This slogan refers, of course, to the fact that a strict consumer focus on price only drives down profit margins for all retailers, leading to layoffs and business closures and eventually threatening the economy as a whole. Due to the damaging ripple effect of the price-driven economy “The job you save may be your own” is another slogan Independence said has been gaining some traction.”
Hmmm... it hasn't happened yet. But it could.
