Frenemies

A new form of collaboration on the web is that of working with competitors. While this has been touted as a likely outcome of web usage since the web began to be used for business purposes, the idea has been gaining some traction lately, with the collaborating competitors being referred to as frenemies.

One important form of it is having customers browsing for certain products directed to a local physical location where they can obtain what they seem to be looking for. The chances are that if a customer is just looking and does not place an online order, they will go to a location within a reasonable distance from them in any event. So the idea is that they are referred to a local place, even that of a competitor. Of course, this works both ways, with competitors referring to their competitors as well, so over time, the business brought in from referrals should hopefully be more than any business lost to competitors.

For an article describing the arrangements made along these lines by a particular company, please see this link.