Not long after wrapping up their string of Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, Amazon has pulled back the curtain on yet another way they’ll be snagging purchases away from physical retail outlets. Starting this Saturday, users of Amazon’s Price Check app will be able to score up to $5 off a purchase of any product if they use the app in-store. 
 
 Here’s how it works: after waltzing into a brick-and-mortar retailer, whip out your iPhone or Android device (with location services enabled) and get to scanning those barcodes. After placing a desired item into the app’s virtual basket, a 5% discount will be applied to the product within 24 hours. Price Check app users can use the discount on up to three products, so they’ll need to choose those items wisely. 
 
 It’s a great idea for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it could help potential buyers get over one of Amazon’s biggest stumbling blocks: experiencing the product. Reading reviews and looking at pictures online is enough in certain instances, but it can be a poor substitute for actually touching and seeing a product in person. With their Price Check promotion, Amazon can actually help people to make purchasing decisions and at the same time giving them an incentive to buy from them. 
 
 On top of that, Amazon will be able to stay up to date with their competitors prices, which could help inform future pricing plans. With just weeks until the holiday of your choice kicks off, Amazon clearly wants to be your shopping source, and they’re better equipped to roll-out pricing changes and promotions than any B&M store. 
 
 As IntoMobile points out, Amazon often has lower prices then their physical retail counterparts, so the additional (minor) savings just sweeten the deal. The big question now is how many users will actually take advantage of Amazon’s offer. The $5 cap means there’s probably a limit to how much play Amazon will get out of the promotion, but I imagine that it could be worth it to them if they manage build up more awareness around their Price Check app. Fortunately for your local stores, the promotion will only run from 9PM PST on December 9 to 11:59 PM PST on December 10 — I can already imagine rabid deal-hunters drooling in anticipation. ||||| If brick-and-mortar stores didn’t hate Amazon enough, they’ll really be steamed this Dec. 10 because the online retailing giant is holding a promotion which will give users an additional 5 percent off its prices when they use the Price Check app. 
 
 Basically, you’ll be able to walk into a store, use the Price Check app (iPhone or Android) to scan the barcode, take a picture or type in the product manually and you’ll be able to get an extra 5 percent (up to $5) off of that product from Amazon. Amazon generally has lower prices anyways, so this is just the cherry on top. 
 
 “The ability to check prices on your mobile phone when you’re in a physical retail store is changing the way people shop,” said Sam Hall, director of Amazon Mobile, in a prepared statement. “Price transparency means that you can save money on the products you want and that’s a great thing for customers. Price Check in-store deals are another incentive to shop smart this holiday season.” 
 
 This has been the first holiday shopping season where mobile shopping has actually gone mainstream, as reports suggest record numbers of mobile purchases and I see more and more people comparing prices in stores on their phones. Heck, Amazon and eBay even opened pop-up stores in major cities this shopping season and it encouraged shoppers to use their mobile phones to buy products and have them delivered to their homes. 
 
 While it’s tough for physical stores to compete based on margins and costs, these companies still do have some advantages. First of all, people have proven that they will pay a slight premium if the shopping experience is better than a purely online one and there’s always the advantage of being able to take your product home immediately. Additionally, not all mobile shopping technology has to hurt stores, as companies like Shopkick are trying to use smartphones to augment the in-store experience. 
 
 [Image via Shutterstock, artjazz] ||||| Photograph by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images. 
 
 I didn’t make a lot of friends in the retail and publishing industries last week when I suggested that independent bookstores were the spawn of Satan. I argued that by making it cheap and easy for people to buy a lot of books, Amazon has been a boon for the book industry and “literary culture” in a way that many bookstores can’t match. 
 
 Many defenders of bookstores countered that by focusing on dollars and cents, I’d missed the whole point of these establishments. Bookstores, it turns out, don’t primarily exist to sell books—instead, they’re more like bars for readers. “Bookstores provide a space to meet friends, cruise for a date, and hide out when you have nothing to do on a Saturday night,” Will Doig wrote at Salon. I suspect that many bookstore lovers agree with Doig, which is exactly why many of these shops are going out of business. Bars can survive because alcohol is an extremely profitable good. Books aren’t—so if you think of your favorite bookstore as a comfortable spot to find well-read potential mates rather than as a place for commerce, you’re not helping its owner. 
 
 If you want bookstores to stick around, you should root for them to improve the way they sell stuff. Booksellers won’t survive the Amazon onslaught by merely wagging their fingers at the retail giant. Their only hope is to match the commercial innovations Jeff Bezos has brought to shopping. Indeed, this applies to all retailers, not just bookstores. The Internet has revolutionized how we buy stuff, but the main beneficiaries of this revolution have been warehouse companies like Amazon rather than firms that maintain a physical presence in your neighborhood. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This month, Amazon offered customers a discount to purchase stuff online while they were shopping at local establishments. It’s time neighborhood retailers fought Kindle Fire with Kindle Fire. Indeed, tablets and smartphones could be store owners’ best weapons against Jeff Bezos—if only they’d embrace them. 
 
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 Take reviews and recommendations. Pretty much everyone uses the Web to research products before they purchase them. Amazon has turned this fact into a competitive advantage; by collecting and curating reviews for more than a decade—and by creating an efficient recommendations engine based on millions of purchase decisions—the firm has become the first place many people look for product information. This database, which Bezos’ firm spent a huge amount of time and money to build, can just as easily be harvested by local retailers who invested nothing in its creation. If I ran a hardware store, I’d put up a sign encouraging in-store research: “Looking for a drill? People on Amazon love the Black & Decker 9099KC. We offer free Wi-Fi, so feel free to pull out your phone and browse online reviews!” Bookstores could do the same thing: “Confused about which baby sleep-training book is best? The No-Cry Sleep Solution gets nearly 5 stars on Amazon.” 
 
 Of course, many stores are skittish about letting customers browse online. I often look up product reviews and prices when I’m shopping, and I’ve been busted several times by employees enforcing a strict no-barcode-scanning policy. I’m always offended by such policies—why shouldn’t I research the best gas grill before I purchase it?—but I can see the stores’ rationale. Prices online tend to be cheaper, so if I’m looking something up on my phone, there’s a good chance I’ll be attracted to the discount and walk out of the store empty-handed. Market research backs this up. One survey sponsored by Motorola found that in many retail categories—especially consumer electronics, sporting goods, and books—people use their phones primarily to compare prices; checking product reviews is usually a secondary use. 
 
 But fighting the price checkers is a futile endeavor. People think of their phones as constant companions, so you’ll never convince them to keep them stuffed in their pockets. Plus, according to the same Motorola study, price isn’t always the primary reason that people decide to walk out without buying anything. Respondents said that the main reason they leave bookstores “without the item that you wanted” is that the store didn’t have the book they came looking for. That was true at toy stores, furniture shops, and drugstores, too. Other popular reasons for leaving a store without buying stuff? The customer couldn’t find the item, thought the lines were too long, or found the staff unable to answer questions. 
 
 Smartphones could help stores address each of these problems. AisleBuyer, a startup based in Boston, has created a way for local stores to make their own smartphone apps. Among other features, these custom apps let customers make purchases from their phones—when you’re ready to buy that book, just press a button and walk out the door. AisleBuyer also collects and mines sales data from many of its clients, which means that over time, it will be able to build the sort of recommendations engine that powers Amazon. If your local record store uses an AisleBuyer app, then, it might suggest—based on your previous purchases—that you come in to get the new Adele album. Because the app tracks how often you’ve bought stuff, the store could even give you a discount for loyalty. 
 
 Apple could also serve as a model for other retailers. Just before Thanksgiving, the company released an updated version of its retail app, which you can fire up when you enter an Apple Store. In addition to letting you buy products from your phone and pick up stuff you’ve purchased online, the app connects you to sales staff who can answer your questions. Say you go to an Apple Store to buy a laptop. You look at the various MacBooks, and you narrow your choice down to the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Air. Which should you buy? Just pull out your app and hit Get Help. This alerts an employee, who sees a map of the store on his iPod Touch; your location is highlighted on his map. So he walks over to make the sale. Anyone who’s ever tried to wrangle help in a busy electronics store—or a home improvement shop, a shoe store, a bookstore, anywhere—will recognize that this is a killer feature.
– In a scheme clearly devised to give brick-and-mortar retailers nightmares, Amazon is running a one-day promotion on Dec. 10 in which customers can score up to $15 in discounts for literally walking out of stores. Here's how it works: Download the Amazon Price Check app for your iPhone or Android device, walk into the retailer of your choice on Saturday with the geo-location feature on, scan three things you'd like to buy, and leave. Then, anytime within the next 24 hours you can buy all three from Amazon at 5% off, to a maximum of $5 each. That might not sound like much, but as IntoMobile points out, Amazon's prices are usually lower anyway, so that discount is something of a bonus. Plus, Chris Velazco of TechCrunch notes, it allows customers to see a product in person before buying—something you can't usually do on Amazon.