Interesting links. Thanks.
I see it like this:
Service-
Unless the small dealers can step up to the plate and compete with the box store by offering a better level of customer service than the box stores can, then they (small dealerships) are doomed. By better level of service, I mean that they must be able to accept returned goods for 30 days (minimum) just like the box stores do...with almost no questions asked.
Small dealerships must also be able to help consumers with warranty claims and/or repairs, and not simply shine the customer on. The box stores haven't yet got a handle on this level of service, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they eventually will....and if they do, and the small dealerships don't get better at it, then the small dealerships will go extinct.
ARE YOU ON CRACK?!, I am a small dealership. People come to me after getting totally pissed off with the big box stores. I get the privilege of telling customers that the box store lied to them and the reconditioned producet they bought has NO warranty not the "full warranty just like a new one" that the idiot in the box store told them it had.
I do like when the customer is amazed that I actually do repairs on site and don't have to send stuff anywhere. I fixed a Craftsman mower last year in the parking lot for a guy who didn't want to let Sears send it to Pennsylvania, I'm in New York 45 minuted form the PA border. He was told by Sears that they'd get him his mower a.s.a.p. ,................about 3 weeks! The MANUFACTURER is the one that has to underwrite a return policy. If it was on the shoulders of the dealer, the public would but the dealer out of business. If there was a 7 or 14 or 30 day no questions asked return policy then people would "buy" all the equipment they needed for a project, use it, and return it. Free is better than a rental house. Would you buy a piece of equipment that someone else returned? For how much $ off? Let it go for cost? How does the dealer survive? Your model does not work, there are no power equipment dealers on Fantasy Island.