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[Jeff P]

North America. Turn of the century. No. Not this one. The one where the first two numbers went from 18 to 19.

Liquor stores are popular. The store owners don't really understand or even care about their customers. Why? The store owners have the only game in town and they know it. You wanna buy booze? You gotta buy it from us. Anybody who walks into my store I can treat them any way I want. I can get away with it because I'm the only one with a license to sell booze. And oh yes, they WILL buy booze. That's just the way it is.

After a while every time a customer walks into a liquor store in any neighborhood in North America they find they are treated like shit. Worse, the owners and the managers have been doing it for so long that they've taught their employees to treat the customers like shit. It's multi-generational and becomes hard wired into the way the store owners operate their businesses.

But the customer still wants to drink. So he puts up with it. For decades. Over the years the store owners let their stores become run down. New customers who come of age venture into a liquor store once and think "Yuck. The place is a dump and they treat me like shit there. Maybe I won't buy booze as often as my dad did." But they keep coming back. Because they can't buy booze anywhere else.

North America. Turn of the century. This one. Where the first two numbers went from 19 to 20...

The liquor store owners don't have it so good anymore. Suddenly others are competing for the dollars their customers are spending. The guy who wants to drink (bet) has choices now. Convenience stores and supermarkets (casinos, poker rooms, and lotteries) are sprouting up all over the place. Worse, the owners of the new convenience stores and supermarkets aren't treating the customer like shit... just the opposite in fact... and they sell booze (gambling) for less than the independent liquor stores do.

But the independent liquor store owners aren't too bright. They still insist on treating their customers like shit and charging them higher prices than the competition. They even band together (TrackNet) so that signals can be withheld from ADWs, limits can be raised so that players seeking rebates can be thwarted... but it's all in the name of keeping the staus quo so that the last remaining loyal customers their industry has can continue to be treated like shit.

All the customers born after 1965 that the industry should have won over are smart enough to not be treated like shit. They are buying their booze (gambling fix) from those new convenience stores and supermarkets... you know... the guys who understand customer needs and wants and who don't treat the customer like shit? The industry has literally missed the opportunity to win over an entire generation of customers.

Allowed to go on long enough, eventually the industry begins to die the slow painful death it so rightfully deserves.

Unless something changes.

I wonder what that little "something" might be?



-jp

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