I live 10 miles from the town featured in this article and its publication has caused quite a few folks I know around here to renew their effort to buy local. To me though the frustrating thing is this line in the article:
> I twice stopped by Wilson’s, the department store, to try to meet the manager, and saw no shoppers inside the store the entire time I was there. (Wilson’s did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story.)
With a switch in marketing Wilson's could become a destination store as going in feels truly like going back in time. It's a real department store with separate registers in each department staffed by folks who know about what they are selling. Wilson's still puts huge full page ads in the local paper but I've never seen a single online or social marketing message from them. If/when they go out of business it is going to put a huge hole in the fabric of downtown Greenfield.
its publication has caused quite a few folks I know around here to renew their effort to buy local
"Buying local" is the kind of thing everyone is in favor of and no one actually does. Well, okay, not "no one," but far fewer than favor it in theory. Like "giving up Facebook," "switching to Linux" and "always using a condom," the number of people who make the claim in order to signal something about themselves is much smaller than the number actually engaging a behavior.
I didn't find "Everybody Lies" particularly compelling. It was an interesting piece of exploratory research, but I didn't see a lot of effort on generalizability. Several of his examples were using rare occurrence rates.
In short, the whole book felt like he got great access to data, and poked around in it until something interesting popped up. Then overarching conclusions were drawn without significant effort to describe whether or not the data was representative.
I'm fortunate enough to be on a motorcycle trip through New Zealand's South Island right now, and I can see the evidence that plenty of people (albeit the overall population is small) do continue to buy local in every small town I pass through: the archetypal general store is everywhere, not to mention hardware merchants, and many other local businesses serving their local communities. It just doesn't happen much in our bubble.
Your observation is pretty spot on, but I want to add some context. If you’re just doing a trip through NZ (which is awesome and I’m envious of you right now by the way), I’m assuming you haven’t tried to buy anything online.
My experience with shopping online in New Zealand is not like in the US. International shipping prices to NZ are typically insane and shipments take forever. Depending on the item, it’s usually cheaper and faster to just pick it up at the store.
The exception to that is of course online shopping from NZ-based retailers, but I only came across online shops for specific verticals, like computers (e.g. Newegg.com), Trademe (Craigslist), or simply a a brick and mortar shop that also delivers (same price as in store, plus delivery fee). Keep in mind, NZ has a population of something like 5 million people, so it’s harder to get economies of scale.
Furthermore, if you live in a rural area (I don’t know what the cutoff is) without a regular parcel service, you also have to pay an additional delivery fee through NZ Post. This looks like it’s at least $3.70, and maybe more for packages [1].
My point is that I think that the economic incensitves that cause Kiwis to shop locally are the same economic incentives that cause Americans to buy online. I don’t think it’s out of any heightened sense of altruism or local affiliation.
Been using Ubuntu for close to 5 years now. I tried, I really tried to love it but the drivers are horribly outdated. Nvidia graphics broke everything in my Dell 9560. Even a fresh install of Ubuntu LTS is practically unusable. Each keystroke takes around 3 to 7 seconds to register. The screen lag is horrible. I tried fresh install and still everything looks pathetic compared to OSX or even Windows 10.
After Windows 10 got native Ubuntu 16, I just moved to it and though I have to run Linux startup services manually I am pretty satisfied with it.
We can't fight the inevitable just because of personal vendetta. Walmart was a small time store once. They got big because of the ease of use. Same with Amazon. To me it's just stupid to go out of the way to "buy local" when it's a losing game.
I’ve also earnestly tried switching to Linux many times, over 15 years. My most recent attempt was just a month ago, after becoming infuriated by Windows Update.
It’s not terrible, but taking all of my daily work into account, it’s still not feasible on the whole. And the problems are about the same as always. Hardware compatibility, arduous installations and config (yak shaving), and stuff just not working. And the pervasive pattern, inherited from open source itself, that things have recursive dependencies, each involving their own incredible journey of configuration and workarounds. Always the journey, never the destination of getting work done. In the end, I clean installed Windows, set it up to minimize annoyance, and got on with work.
I feel that, much like Blender, Linux requires a certain mindset. I suspect that mindset resembles either masochism or Stockholm Syndrome. I still have no complaints about MacOS.
I've found Linux usually works great on low end desktops with limited use (such as web browsing) but I've had many problems with modern GPUs and multiple displays. I upgraded to a 4k monitor and wanted to use my old monitor as a secondary and it required manual editing of configurations to support a setup with two monitors and two different resolutions. This is stuff that has worked on Windows or Mac for decades that Linux still hasn't figured out.
Linux SysAdmin here with 20 years’ experience: I love it on the server and hate it on the desktop. Always use the right tool for the job.
But that’s a good analogy for this article. UNIX-like devices did eventually dominate the world, just not in the form factor we were expecting. I’m writing this on my pocketable UNIX device. You’ve probably heard of it; it’s called an iPhone. If one adds up all the devices in the world, Microsoft only owns a fraction of all of the operating systems installed.[1] Like the store keepers in this article, Microsoft failed to adapt but continued to rely on an increasingly failing business model (desktops). There will still be a place for Windows in 20 years but it will be a niche product like macOS is today. Unless they quickly adapt.
I certainly prefer to Amazon something than go to a store. This story is one of struggling to protect a failing business model. Were I one of those business owners I would spend all of my (increasingly) free time learning to either sell online or tweak my service so that it’s so compelling that people would willingly dress, drive out, risk crowds, and pay more. I would get online (hah!) and find the world’s best retailers, find out what they’re doing, and emulate their success.
There are still buggy whip manufacturers[2] but they learned what was needed to adapt. Adapt or get run over.
> I love it on the server and hate it on the desktop
It's an equal nightmare to develop on windows and deploy on Linux. But it's true. I have Linux systems running for couple of years with no downtime at all.
You don't buy a random laptop and hope it supports mac os right? How about buy something with linux instead of buy the cheapest junk you can get and hope it supports linux?
While there are problems with linux I'm not sure you have correctly identified them.
"And the pervasive pattern, inherited from open source itself, that things have recursive dependencies, each involving their own incredible journey of configuration and workarounds."
You get software from repos. Your system figures out the dependencies for you I literally have no idea where you could possibly be coming from.
"Hardware compatibility"
Buy compatible hardware.
"arduous installations"
Don't know what you are talking about. Given well supported hardware installation is incredibly easy and has been for over a decade.
" feel that, much like Blender, Linux requires a certain mindset. I suspect that mindset resembles either masochism or Stockholm Syndrome. I still have no complaints about MacOS."
You accept that MacOS doesn't run on just any hardware, buy hardware from a vendor who sell you MacOS preinstalled on supported hardware and experience no issues. Can I propose that you would have similar lack of issues with a vendor who sells prepackaged linux solutions?
Linux is bad in some ways but you are mostly kinda bad at linux. People installing hackintoshes seem to exist in a world that is fraught with pitfalls and workarounds but nobody expects MacOS to work out of the box on whatever. Linux by virtue of actually working on 99% of machines catches flack for only working optimally on 80%.
To boot you wonder why apple who has received thousands of dollars from you works better than a product which you provide zero support for. Its super likely that if you and others who wanted open source solutions to work for them had spent 15 years giving open source software 10% of the support provided to closed source solutions you might have something closer to what you want.
The manufacturer of the machine or components thereof who has all the specs and time put in the work that enables windows to support the hardware.
Free software development time is finite and information on some hardware is notably absent.
If you desire better support pool money to pay for improvements to particular hardware. Anything else is hoping people are willing to expend their resources for free so that you don't have to.
In the meantime I'm guessing most people intend to eventually buy a new machine. Upgrade time is a great time to think about trying Linux. Instead of
Linux it will run on whatever terrible machine you got on sale at Walmart with a Vista certified sticker.
Microsoft pays good money to vendors to improve the hardware for windows.
Outside of hardware primarly used under Linux, you won't have much luck paying any vendor money to improve that situation. You'll have to suck it up and make it work anyway by patching the kernel.
>Linux it will run on whatever terrible machine you got on sale at Walmart with a Vista certified sticker.
Vista? I have upgraded people to Linux with 98 stickers and earlier. These people won't buy new machines, the current machine will have to work.
There won't be a "next computer" for some of them.
There is plenty of old hardware that won't properly work for modern linux distros, either by missing firmware packages or software not running on the CPU anymore (such as on an old Thinkpad of mine from 1998, modern distro's don't properly run, a lot of stuff fails with invalid opcodes or segfaults. An ancient copy of knoppix runs (with kernel 2.3))
Even then, most people don't buy with "it must run linux" in mind, they grab whatever has good sounding numbers on it.
Heh, wasn't thinking of going that old, more like a Thinkpad T430 (can be had for $150) or newer depending on budget. Any of that line will run your distro of choice without issue.
I’m as baffled by your perspective on configuration as you are by mine. I’d spend half my time working to improve userspace if I could financially afford to. “You’re bad at Linux” is the worst way I can think of to win anyone over.
Nobody is paying me to sell you Linux. I'm honestly more interested in countering what I see as low quality information borne of lack of experience and knowledge.
Even though way more machines work great out of the box it's pretty clear your machine isn't one of them. Unfortunately since manufacturers often don't care about linux support on a particular box buying a machine and hoping its supported isn't an optimal strategy on linux or mac.
There is nothing about linux that would imply screen lag or keystrokes its pretty clear that something was clearly broken with your gpu driver. For example using software rendering rather than your gpu. Possibly something that could have been corrected by using drivers that aren't "horribly outdated" which are certainly available.
You didn't happen to think all the people using linux are just dealing with keysstrokes that take seconds to show up and pretending its normal did you?
People weren't objecting to Walmart solely out of a "personal vendetta". They ostensibly wanted local retail because it makes for a more tightly-knit/healthier community. You can call it sentimentality but it's not something with no value, especially in small communities.
Having rolled my own ecommerce store on Ubuntu LAMP for several years, I finally got frustrated at the difficulty of recovering from power failures/spikes that hose it's file system after the UPS died. On average it takes 8 days to reconfigure and restore the new installation with all the lineup of products being tweaked to perfection.
This last time, I put Windows 10 and WAMP on the server and was amazed. I was tweaking products after a couple of hours. Things like ssl certificate, smtp/pop3 server, remote desktop all installed and worked with no arduous arcane CLI commands or hours spent researching tasks required.
Bonus: Robust antivirus and easy backups with a simple DOS script run from the task scheduler.
With only one buyer a week and 250 unique daily visitors, I don't need the speed of LAMP for my estore.
I use Linux for long time. And newer stayed at ubuntu for long time. Current LTS release comes with broken VirtualBox, which hangs system and they have no plans to fix it.
I always imagine an unspoken "at a certain price" when people say they believe in buying locally. I live a short distance from a grocery store in my neighborhood, but I rarely go there because I like to cook and their prices for meat and produce are always higher than the big chains. In the case of their meat the difference has sometimes been as much as $1.50/lb. which is huge if you're someone who prefers a frugal lifestyle.
Edit: As for condoms, I think the situation is a little different. They ruin sex compared to going without a condom, marketing from Trojan be damned. I'm not trying to endorse the mindset, but there are many people who are primarily just trying to avoid getting someone/themselves pregnant so if someone's on the pill that's good enough for them.
Welp, gave up facebook a year after they opened, been using linux as a main home computer since 2001 (tho I am multi-os), always used a condom, and I always buy local (amazon, in seattle) and starbucks (same)...
> Online retail—including selling through Amazon—has helped him keep the doors open. (He bemoans the fees he has to pay Amazon for the privilege, however.) He estimates that half of his revenue comes from online sales; the other half is a mix of in-store transactions and pop-up sales he does in busy locations like downtown Boston. “I go where the customers are,” he told me. But his Greenfield location produces only a small part of his revenues—if he makes $50 in a day in his store, it’s a good day, he said.
$50 a day at a brick-and-mortar location? That sounds unsustainable, I wonder why even bother keeping it open? Does it help his branding/online reputation?
There are some cities that consider warehouses "Industrial" zoning and retail as "Commercial". Keeping a storefront could help you stay in a commercially zoned area if you prefer it for some reason.
To add to your comment, many if not most municipalities tax industrial buildings at a higher rate than they do commercial buildings. This could indeed be a nice tax saving strategy for the business.
> $50 a day at a brick-and-mortar location? That sounds unsustainable, I wonder why even bother keeping it open?
Well, in some cases, there is always money laundering to consider. Many physical retail locations with seemingly no customers in shady areas exist for nefarious reasons (not claiming its the case here, of course).
I don't get the downvotes for this comment. This is a real issue that I have first hand experience with. The poster even qualified the statement saying its probably not the case for this store but it is certainly true of a number of establishments - these operate in the second and third stages of money laundering also known as layering and integration.
There were articles related to this on how shopping and branding is shifting:
(1) An article about an Independent Bike Vendor that shifted its business model to an Independent Bike Services. They make their money primarily from servicing bikes, making recommendations. Releasing pressure from having to make their most revenue from selling bikes allows them to make the best recommendation for the biker. Bikers who buy direct from manufacturers will still want an expert to service their bikes.
(2) An article about Nike and some of the major brands shifting to a different business model where in-store shops are no longer distribution channels but rather marketing channels. These shops provide an in-person experience. They are paid by the overall revenue for the brand rather than what gets sold through the store. This aligns the incentive structure to what consumers are now doing: trying them on in a local store and then buying them online.
Where do small business owners fall into this? I don't know. Bikers and commuters tend to have a lot of attachment and affection for their bikes, and are willing to pay for services. Clothing in a department store, perhaps, not so much. Books? Toys?
I wonder if internet shopping will one day help small towns rather than hurt them. One of the things that really sucks about living in small towns is that its difficult to buy the stuff you really want due to limited products available. When small town residents have access to unlimited ranges of goods and services at cheapest prices, its one less reason to travel to, or even move to the nearest city.
Small towns rely on B&O tax revenue from small businesses though. So for the sake of streamlined access to cheap goods now there's no money to provide police protection, roads, parks, libraries, etc. that are paramounts of small-town life.
I suspect the common political crisis of most small towns over the next decade is going to be raising property taxes. Years, decades of everyone elected fools who refuse to raise taxes has lead to infrastructure that is falling apart, no money for local services, no money for parks and libraries.
Now as small businesses all fall to e-commerce (often in part because their taxes were raised to compensate lowering residential property taxes) residents of small towns are finally coming to realize that all these services they've been provided actually cost money.
That problem was already solved by catalog and QVC.
The problems in rural areas stem from lack of new job growth since 2008 implosion, and jobs with poor wages (and not enough of these even). Not gonna help people buy much online.
Logistics around literal access aren't the issue. It's the same old tune: financial access.
Putting a website up in place of a catalog doesn't solve that problem.
> That problem was already solved by catalog and QVC.
This is like saying that playing video games over the internet is nothing new, because hey, people already played games over distance in the form of chess by mail.
1. Convenience. I used to stop at a local toy store on the way to a birthday party, or the day before, to buy a wrapped present. They closed, so now I drive ~15min each way to the next closest toy store.
2. How do I know what local stores have unless I go there and ask? I'd like an app that would allow me to comparison shop across Amazon/Target/Walmart/local stores. Let me know if you want to work on that with me, sounds interesting.
3. Add value - online reviews are sometimes useful, honest expert advice is great.
You know how Europe keeps its small businesses? Mixed-use development with large population densities in larger cities and strong centre-villes in smaller towns (some that aren't drivable).
What the US calls "city planning" is a complete oxymoron.
4. Price match. This can be a double-edged sword and it may be unsustainable but if I'm the shop owner I'd lose a bit of margin rather than the entire sale. As a customer, who wouldn't want the item now vs. waiting 1-5 days for it.
That's a benefit of shopping in a brick and mortar store! I used to always get annoyed and say "no thanks, I'm good" when the employee approached and asked that question, but then a friend told me that I should take their help. If you tell the employee what you are looking for, or that you don't know exactly what you are looking for, they will usually (about 75% in my experience) be very helpful. The employees tend to be very knowledgeable about what they are selling and have good advice about what to buy or what not to buy.
> The employees tend to be very knowledgeable about what they are selling
That's often true of specialty stores, especially independent local ones. It's often not true of big chains and stores that don't have a narrow focus.
It's also often the case that they will steer you based on their knowledge of their sales incentive structure, which is often much better than their knowledge of product.
In my experience, employees seem to have an uncanny ability to annoy me when I just want to browse, and avoid me when I want their help.
Out of the last 5 times I've gone into a store hoping to get some help and advice from an employee, I reckon 3/5 they have ignored me until I found what I was looking for, or concluded that they didn't have it and just left.
I've even put my hand up in the middle of a store, like I was in school, waiting for assistance because ther were so few employees around, or because after asking me if I needed help as I walked in the door, they lost interest in me, and decided to have a chat with their colleagues.
> I've even put my hand up in the middle of a store, like I was in school, waiting for assistance because ther were so few employees around, or because after asking me if I needed help as I walked in the door, they lost interest in me, and decided to have a chat with their colleagues.
I probably wouldn't have helped you either, that seems like incredibly strange behavior.
And what about following you everywhere? Or complementing that clothing item or object you just touched. It is very annoying. And one of the main reasons I avoid them like a plague. It'd be great if the shopping experience at brick-and-mortar store was like the Apple Store.
Most of the time I find myself pulling my phone and googling the item in question to read about reviews.
Ultimately, if you're a business that isn't providing what people want at a price they're willing to pay, you're not going to stay in business. I don't know that there is anything to fix here, other than making sure that the people that depend on places like this for work get a soft landing and help finding new work.
IDK man. "Free market will decide" is great, but the issue is becoming that the free market has decided that low wage, non-skilled jobs are low hanging fruit to cut. Replace someone with a kiosk or a robot or just outsource the whole store to an online location and a warehouse/shipping department.
The biggest issue with these sort of stories are that there are these Neo-Luddites who think that we can keep/make jobs in the face of online retailers killing many types of work. Giant corporations don't hire the same number of people that they used to, and the people they do hire don't tend to be low skill positions.
Retail is dying by inches, but it's dying. People can make "customer service" a rallying cry, but "customer convenience" seems to be the actual metric that matters. We're getting rid of these jobs, and too often we're either not replacing them or we're dealing with people who were in JOB X for 10+ years and are unwilling/unable to change to a new field.
I'm not saying any of this is "bad", just that "soft landing and help finding new work" is a cute dream, but not likely. This is what disruption does. It ruins the current paradigm.
I have to completely agree. I remember hearing once that "convenience beats quality", but I also remember reading that "a restaurant with great food never goes out of business".
I think the only avenue for some of these places is to make up for the loss of convenience with high margin, high quality products and services for those who care. But many of these smaller communities just don't have the populations to support many, if any, of these businesses.
But a goods distribution network may just be the paradigm that's being disrupted, and what may happen is a far more services oriented set of business, until that gets displaced by new innovations.
Ultimately, I think we have the population globally, and the needs to support most of us having fulfilling work. But it may just require a lot of creative relocation individually.
So it turns out that "customer service" is actually a good in and of itself that has a price and needs customers willing to pay that price. A Walmart shopper is typically not willing or able to trade some of their disposable income for a more knowledgable/helpful employee. There is a reason that Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and Walmart pick the inventory mix they have, where they locate, and who they hire. They are all different business models with different customer groups.
People with less disposable income have increasingly prioritized physical products over paying for any meaningful interaction with employees which is fine. It is their choice to do so. If people actually value having meaningful interactions on main street in small town America they will still have them. But I suspect that most people don't value that, which one could argue I suppose is bad, but it should ultimately be left up to the individuals that live in small town Vermont, not me.
I rely on a couple of small businesses near me, one of which is my butcher. One might say well the butcher is an unskilled job, but he is selling me two things. First is better meat than Whole Foods. Secondly he is quite a good cook so he can recommend cooking techniques or I can say "I want to do the brisket sous vide" and he will trim it so just the right amount of fat is on it. Obviously this works better with organic products rather than something made of plastic where everything in the same box is a perfect substitute.
Not to disagree with anything else you wrote, but anyone who says butchery is an unskilled job has definitely never tried it. What other C21st job has a legitimate need for chain mail?
>People can make "customer service" a rallying cry, but "customer convenience" seems to be the actual metric that matters.
Exactly. Don't make it hard for me to give you my money.
Home depot and Autozone aren't going to be killed by online retail because a large fraction of their customers need drain snakes and replacement car parts today, not two days from today.
3yr and 22min. 3yr to pay off the right people and jump through the right hoops to prevent MA from bothering you while you conduct business. 22min for the drone flight
replace 'foreign market' with 'big box' and 'domestic' with 'small guy' and there you have it..
the 'consumer' here also can't realistically open up a factory to compete with any of the products being sold... and so is not really a full market participant
Why would I care what happens to some rando for profit company, even if it is small?
All I care about is the consumer. And consumers benefit when prices are low.
People keep predicting that price dumping will cause prices to rise later or something but those predictions have never come true.
IE, people keep saying that Walmart will do this, but how long have they been around? A long time, and prices are still low. Same with Amazon. Prices are still low.
How many decades from now will those inevitable price increases happen?
By the scale of the developed world, the US barely has a social safety net, and the current governing party at the national level is actively pursuing dismantling what little there is.
I agree. If consumers actually prefer local businesses, they'll shop there and those stores will stick around. If the stores close, it's because people preferred a different business.
The actual agent of change here isn't really Amazon, it's the average consumer deciding that Amazon is better.
Market forces are neither righteous or wicked. They also don't care at all about short-term vs long-term consequences. We don't always have to succumb to these forces and just say "oh well market said so."
Gravity is also a constant and unrelenting force yet we still fly airplanes.
Are there things like airplanes that defy market forces in a controlled manner that can help small businesses?
> They also don't care at all about short-term vs long-term consequences.
Prices don't care about externalities. External consequences, not consequences per some sort of time window. Markets are actually often as good as can be expected at taking time into account at least as it may pertain to a particular good in question.
> Are there things like airplanes that defy market forces in a controlled manner
Markets exist because there are finite amounts of things, you can't really defy that. It would be nice if tradeoffs never needed to exist.
To emphasize your point further, airplanes make a tradeoff in terms of massive fuel expenditure to get a few people or goods elsewhere quickly.
There are similar tradeoffs in markets -- the town here made one of those tradeoffs in excluding Walmart. They relegated their residents to buying from higher priced stores or driving further to shop at a big box store. And they (and I) were happy with that tradeoff.
The tradeoff they have available against e-commerce is higher local taxes on all goods purchased with subsidies from those taxes going back to brick and mortar locations. (You can't only tax mail order goods without violating the interstate commerce clause, as I understand it.)
True, except that we don't built airplanes by ignoring the fundamentals of gravity or its sheer existence. Bureaucrats and politicians abound who can't grasp supply and demand, and have no accountability when reality causes their plans to crash.
Airplanes have to abide by fixed natural laws. Our version of markets is defined entirely by humans and we can change the rules in whatever way we wish. The only truly free market would be no laws at all and let the stronger win.
> Our version of markets is defined entirely by humans and we can change the rules in whatever way we wish.
no, you can't. everywhere people trade, there's a market. all you can do is raise the costs associated with legal markets, and deprive those engaging in trade of the rule of law.
take a look at the drug cartels for what happens when you try and legislate markets totally out of existence.
Then there can be only one. Either by the destruction of all competitors, or the amalgamation of the few remaining such that they behave as one (telecoms aren't that far off here). Then the market isn't free, it's just lords and their serfs.
In a lot of ways, they brought this on themselves. Small, local businesses don't have the selection or the prices that large national stores have.
In the end, it's going to be Walmart or Amazon. Walmart will at least hire local people to staff the stores, and local stores might be able to survive as ultra-niche places that will carry all the oddball "long tail" stuff Walmart won't bother with. But if you don't let the population have a nearby store that has good prices, good customer service, and a good selection of the things the bulk of the population wants, they'll go online for it, they'll discover that Amazon actually does have everything (well, except for a Chromecast or a Nest), and the nearest fulfillment center will be too far away to hire anybody local (I say "will" rather than "may", because if they're keeping out Walmart, they'll keep out Amazon fulfillment centers too).
And let's not just talk about the selection and the prices. Let's talk about customer service. Big companies prioritize the bottom line, so the last thing they want to do is turn away customers or risk a black eye on social media that can spur a boycott. Small businesses tend to take an attitude of "I'll run my business my way, even if it hurts the bottom line!". Case in point: Macy's has fired multiple employees for telling trans women that they're not allowed to use the ladies' fitting rooms. They have a corporate policy of non-discrimination, and employees who break that policy get canned. Why? Because turning away customers is bad for business, and the last thing they want is for "boycott Macy's for transphobia" to trend on Twitter. A small businesses may very well take the attitude of "I'm not treating you freaks like women, so get out!", they're willing to lose the business for the sake of their principles, and they're not going to face much backlash in a conservative small town. Or you see all the cake bakers who refuse to bake for LGBT people; you won't see that kind of discrimination at Kroger. I am 100% fine with these small businesses going away. They actively make life worse for marginalized people like the LGBT community (I'm a lesbian trans woman myself), so I'll do whatever it takes to accelerate that process and replace them with bigcorps.
And let's not just talk about how small businesses are worse for the customer. Let's talk about how they treat their own employees. Laws requiring employers to provide insurance benefits to their employees don't kick in unless the employer is over a certain size. And it's precisely because of small businesses that the US doesn't have as many employee-friendly laws: it's the small businesses, not the big corporations, who are terrified of the government mandating that employers provide large amounts of vacation time or comprehensive health coverage. Big businesses are big enough to soak the cost; mom-and-pops aren't. And it's not just about benefits: think also what HR departments can do for you. If you work at Walmart, and your supervisor is sexually harassing you, you can file a complaint with HR. If you work at a local shop... your supervisor is probably the owner, so your choice is to either live with sexual harassment or find yourself unemployed. And there's evidence showing that the gender wage gap among pharmacists almost completely went away when pharmacies shifted away from mom-and-pops and towards big box stores that hire people to work shifts.
Whenever I hear stories like this, I think of a handful of strips from Something Positive back in 2004:
> And it's not just about benefits: think also what HR departments can do for you.
As an employee, your employer’s HR department exists for the sole purpose of maximizing the net value that the employer can extract from you, the “human resource” being exploited by the company (and if that maximum turns negative, that can be rephrased as minimizing the net harm you can do to the company.)
If they happen to do something that actually benefits you, that's a side effect, not the main goal.
>Big companies prioritize the bottom line, so the last thing they want to do is turn away customers or risk a black eye on social media that can spur a boycott. Small businesses tend to take an attitude of "I'll run my business my way, even if it hurts the bottom line!"
This is preposterous. A small business relies on all the good customer relationships and feedback it can possibly get, running it in a customer-hostile manner is a great way to go out of business. A social media cascade might cost a megacorp some lost profits; for a small business it could easily be your downfall.
>think also what HR departments can do for you
HR departments do NOT work for you; they work for the company. HR is not and will never be your friend. Megacorps don't magically make workplaces less toxic just because they have an HR department.
What exactly do you think is unethical about it? The store either has the best price or not and it is certainly within the consumers best interest to get the best usage of their money. Is it the fact that "she's standing right there"? Poor behavior doesn't make it unethical. There is no obligation to buy a product just because I am standing in the store.
There is an argument to be made that unsustainable behavior is unethical; this is one possible derivation from Kant's categorical imperative, for example. Various forms of utilitarianism also tend to point towards unsustainable behavior being unethical.
Using a local business as a showroom for an online business is unsustainable. If enough people do it, then the local business will cease to exist.
It's perfectly legal, and I don't particularly think it should be made illegal, but that doesn't make it ethical.
There's a contrary point of view which is, "I've transported myself right here, into your store, with money in hand, ready to buy this thing right now" You, local merchant, have a distinct advantage over all online and all other B&M retailers and all you have to do is provide a reasonably close approximation to the same value I can get by tapping a few buttons on my phone and waiting 1-2 days.
The local merchant has the advantage, but many of the small, local merchants around here seem to be content to pull a Leon Lett on the 1 yard line. [0]
"Sorry, our price is $XYZ [50% higher] and we don't price match."
"OK, fair enough. <tap, tap, tap>"
On the flip-side, Home Depot, BestBuy, and Target have generally competitive pricing to start and do price match online competitors, so they get a lot of my "need it now" business.
It's unethical to use a store as a showroom and then order the item at a lower price from someone who doesn't have to cover the cost of maintaining said showroom.
Either take the gamble and order online sight-unseen, or pay the higher price involved in maintaining floor space and inventory.
So you feel it's unethical to go into a store and compare prices? Disregard the ethics of 2 different sales channels being able to compete on pricing because of different distribution set ups, but in what universe is it the consumers job to make sure "joe from around the block" has a job at this specific store?
Is it impolite to bust out a phone right in front of a sales rep and say "hold on, let me check amazon", sure. But there's no moral responsibility on the customer's part to do business with anyone because "hey man, it's more expensive for me to run this business".
This isn't some surprise to retail. This has been going on for over a decade. You can't compete with the internet on price for (many) things. But you can compete on immediate availability, customer experience, etc. If you're fighting a price fight with the internet, gtfo of retail.
So you feel it's unethical to go into a store and compare prices?
As I said, it's unethical to use a store as a showroom and then buy elsewhere. It's a simple concept, and I believe you're being intentionally obtuse and disingenuous in your reply.
Stores allow people to enter and leave without purchasing anything or declaring intent to purchase. Consumers are doing nothing unethical by entering the store, investigating items they are interested in, and then comparing them to options online. Blaming consumers for comparing the options available to them is ridiculous.
Yes, this is inconvenient for the people who own those stores. No, the consumer isn't doing anything unethical.
Yes, you are doing something unethical, and my claims carry exactly as much weight as yours.
But if people continue to behave the way that you're suggesting is okay, we'll end up with very few brick and mortar options and we'll have to rely entirely on sight-unseen information in our purchasing decisions.
comparing prices has been done way before online shopping just took more time and effort. there are of course things that can not be compared though like crafted and one of a kind type things.
It's unethical towards the shop owner. Coming into a store can be viewed as an intent to buy. And if not only you aren't buying, but you are browsing to buy in another store - it makes it worse.
Some stores are made to browse, and it's less of a problem to come in and not buy, but it's still a problem to explicitly come to browse to buy elsewhere.
Not really. People have been "window shopping" or "just browsing" in retail locations since...well the dawn of retail locations. Now they're just able to be more efficient about it.
I don't agree with GP that this is "unethical" on the consumer's part, but I disagree that the consequences of this behavior can be reduced to simply more efficient window shopping. Traditional window shopping involves price comparisons between competitors that are subject to the same physical costs and infrastructure.
Personally, I'll support a local store even at the cost of a few dollars if it's a store I respect, such as an independent operator. Otherwise if it's just another corporation, I'll just go with the cheapest option available.
Heck, I'll pay a few more dollars if the item is right there in the store since it's more convenient (unless it has to be delivered anyway). It's also not like the prices online are a secret. Many brick and mortar stores price track each day.
Honestly. The correct way is to take pics with your cell. Then ask to use the bathroom (even though you're not buying anything) and comparison shop in privacy.
Best Buy once told me that I was prohibited from taking pictures in their store. They said it was for loss prevention.
After I got over the shock, I handed everything in my hands (small stuff) to the manager and then went to Office Depot and bought my new Color Laser Printer there instead. They lost at least $600 in sales that day over that policy.
Why was I taking pictures? I saw a game that I thought my friend in Norway would like, and I was going to tell him about it.
The only thing I can imagine is if they're selling stuff with visible online registration codes. And I thought everyone stopped doing that years ago.
At any rate, it's either just a few Best Buys or they've never caught me doing it, or the employees just don't care, but I've taken pictures in Best Buy lots of times. Mostly to share laughs about their ridiculous HDMI cable prices (and other AV products) in the Magnolia AV area.
> I twice stopped by Wilson’s, the department store, to try to meet the manager, and saw no shoppers inside the store the entire time I was there. (Wilson’s did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story.)
With a switch in marketing Wilson's could become a destination store as going in feels truly like going back in time. It's a real department store with separate registers in each department staffed by folks who know about what they are selling. Wilson's still puts huge full page ads in the local paper but I've never seen a single online or social marketing message from them. If/when they go out of business it is going to put a huge hole in the fabric of downtown Greenfield.