While traditional merchants have long complained that online sellers like Amazon have an unfair advantage because they don’t always have to charge state sales tax and don’t have the same overhead costs, the rise of the smartphone-armed shopper is bringing more retail heartburn to storefronts across the country.
That angst was clear when Amazon.com Inc. offered users of its Price Check app a 5 percent discount recently when they used it to comparison shop in physical stores. Condemnation was even heard from Congress.
The Amazon app is just one of many programs, which are mostly free, that take the guesswork out of figuring out where to find cheap prices. In addition to Price Check, there’s ShopAdvisor and Google Shopper, to name a few, that have become available in recent years. Most get their data by looking at prices on retailers’ own websites.
