I know. Nobody wants to hear this because folks love themselves some Amazon: convenient and you can’t beat the price. I implore you to look at what it’s really costing us. This report: Amazon and Empty Storefronts was released by the American Booksellers Association on January 25, 2016. It looks at the Fiscal and Land Use Impacts of Online Retail. The price we pay goes far beyond the loss of mom & pop stores, which is bad enough.
Do read the full report but hopefully this summary alone will make you
stop using Amazon:
Wow. Can’t wait to read later. I suspected so.
Annie Spiegelman 1st Assistant Director/DGA
Sent from my Commodore 64
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I grew up in a small town in NJ in the 1950 with a Main Street with the stores and service shops every community needs. Then in the next town over one of the first a shopping mall in the country was built.. Our main street survived mostly because of the train station but I think also we were a tight community with the stores owned by people who you had grown up with so the town was supportive of its own. But there were many towns around us whose “main streets” that didn’t survive that first wave of strip malls and shopping centers and it took them years to regroup and rebuild.
Now on-line shopping in many ways has replaces physical stores. Recently I wanted to buy a small portable washing machine for my apartment and when I went to PC Richards they only had one model in the store saying there wasn’t enough of a demand for them and they took up valuable real estate in the store. So I went to another appliance store and they didn’t have a single model on the floor for the same reason. So next I went to Sears and he took out his store iphone so I could order it on-line from his phone. That was what I was told I could de as an alternative at each store I could order it on line.
Stores are now their own competition with their own on-line stores you can order from
and never leave the comfort of your home. From Macy’s to CVS to DSW they all have on line components. So yes Amazon gets to be cheaper because they don’t have a physical store and that gives them a leg up in pricing and yes if stores give me only the choice to buy something on-line I will go for the best deal. I have only bought three things on line from Amazon because they were only available online and Amazon had the best price. As a whole I have bought 5 things on line because that is where I could get them. I am a physical store person. I want to touch and feel and smell if necessary what I’m spending my money on.
For awhile it was a fear the big book stores like Barnes and Nobel would kill off the neighborhood book stores but once again real estate comes into play and these store mostly carry the big titles from the NY Times and the little local book store was the go to store for those obscure titles and authors.
Just like the main streets of small towns had to figure out how to reinvent themselves stores will figure out how to re-invent themselves. We can’t turn back the clock. People were ordering online and when the shoe didn’t fit or the color wasn’t what the buyer thought you could ship it back . . . now in the small print there is an additional charge and I think that alone will make people cut back a lot on shopping on line. People and stores will both find a new way to move forward. Everything evolves.