3 ms·
Digi-Key is certainly not the only ones in this space that doesn't want price comparisons. What about McMaster-Carr? Not a chance in the world they are going
by wensing 19y ago
Digi-Key is certainly not the only ones in this space that doesn't want price comparisons. What about McMaster-Carr? Not a chance in the world they are going to open up their pricing and availability to an Octopart site. Why? Well, I can't speak for them (although I worked there for 2.5 years), but I would guess it's because they want to maintain control. I don't think that necessarily makes them evil, however, because control can mean controlling the customer experience for the better. In other words, perhaps someone could legitimately believe that Octopart is an inferior (non-innovative) approach to part search, and that allowing your products to be searchable via Octopart would confuse and hurt, rather than help, your customers.
Your comparison to travel is an interesting one, because despite Travelocity/Orbitz/Kayak/etc. some airlines (Southwest) can still only be searched via their site. Ironically (despite the recent fiasco) I would consider Southwest to be a very innovative, pleasurable-to-fly airline.
- webmaven 19y ago<blockquote>I would guess it's because they want to maintain control. I don't think that necessarily makes them evil, however, because control can mean controlling the customer experience for the better.</blockquote> Any claim that the desire to maintain control is only for entirely selfless reasons should always be met with the highest suspicion, as would any other claims that something superficially self-serving is actually done for selfless reasons. Note that 'highest suspicion' != 'immediate condemnation'. It is always possible that the superficially self-serving motivation is not what is truly driving a decision, but it's usually the way to bet (and you can be sure that it doesn't hurt), most especially at the emergent organizational/institutional level, rather than the personal.