Not public relation considerations, really. In fact, every state that opens to retailer to consumers shipping would help Wine.com’s bottom line insofar as it would allow the company to shut down their warehouse in that state, reduce their expenses, yet still be able to service the state with no interruption since the wine could be shipped from another existing warehouse.

In fact, I’d argue that there is no wine retailer in America that benefits more than Wine.com by supporting legislative and litigation programs to overturn anti-consumer shipping laws.

That makes it a bottom line issue, not a PR issue.

I don’t think that anyone except Alder is championing breaking the law as a form of civil disobedience. Most retailers who are ignoring the laws are doing so purely for their own self interest. Wine.com is also acting it it’s own self interest by initiating sting operations. So, if you’re a lawyer, you might look at the situation and say “One is breaking the law and the other isn’t” and then side with Wine.com.

However that would be ignoring the harm done to wine consumers whose choices have been arbitrarily limited. The key point is that the retailers’ self-interest aligns more closely with the preferences of consumers than Wine.com’s. That’s why people are taking a dim view of Wine.com. That’s also why people are predicting the worst for them. Smart companies do not deliberately do harm to their customers.

#4: “If you were in a business that depended upon legislation, rather than only the value of your services, for profitability, wouldn’t you want to be pals with the lawmakers?”

This is a red herring. Is this even a comment about Wine.com? If it is, even tangentially, let me reply that no one is saying Wine.com shouldn’t lobby and “be pals” with lawmakers. What people are saying is that it was unimaginably stupid for Wine.com to suddenly become the wine police and try and do the bureaucrats (who can’t, by definition, effect *any* legislative change) job for them. If Wine.com’s actions can’t reasonably be called a lobbying exercise since no legislators were involved, only bureaucrats, then it was a PR move and should be analyzed and judged as such.

Again, smart companies do not throw consumers under the bus while they try and position themselves to more easily benefit from antiquated, anti-consumer laws.

#5: “Even if it did involve violations, authorities would probably exercise their discretion to overlook them if they were done with no benefit to Wine.com other than their contribution to deterring illegal transactions.”

So, in your reading of the facts, there is no benefit at all to Wine.com for turn in it’s competitors? Why are we even talking about this then? The whole thing should never have occurred.

#5: “Those are, of course, public relations, rather than a legal, considerations. Wine.com has no obligation to avert criticism. Commentators have no way of knowing whether their protests have any negative effect on its business, and no discernible basis for offering public relations advice in the first place.”

I disagree is some measure with each of these statements.

This is almost exclusively a public relations issue. As stated above, Wine.com’s sting was not an act of lobbying, it was a PR maneuver aimed at state bureaucrats and deserves to be addressed as one. Instead of pandering to state bureaucrats they should be addressing the needs of their customers.

Moreover, Wine.com has every obligation, if they value their profits, to please their consumer base. Critics know that by *not* buying from Wine.com in the future they are impacting sales (their own lack of purchases) on the margins, and that by speaking out negatively about Wine.com they may influence others to do the same. A boycott of a product is a perfectly rational response to a perceived injustice, and history is filled with examples of consumers successfully changing the behavior of companies whose actions they disagreed with by boycotting.

Finally, are you honestly saying that consumers have no standing to comment on how they feel about a company’s actions simply because they are not PR professionals? Are ideas for alternate courses of action null and void simply by virtue of the profession of the conveyor of the idea? And isn’t a retailer an expert, by definition, on its consumer’s preferences and therefore the perfect person to weigh in on the effectiveness of a PR initiative affecting those customers?

You my be playing devil’s advocate, but that doesn’t prevent readers from making assumptions about where you actually stand on these issues. This isn’t a court of law, it’s a court of public opinion. And in that court I’d say both Wine.com and your arguments are losing badly.