On Line Shopping Are we bad people now ?

[Frederick]

I have to say I was one of the many  thousands of people who this year spent more on line buying presents than in the shops.  I have listened to the news reports of worried shop owners concerned about their  Xmas turn over  but given the internet prices linked with the cost of driving about looking for stuff these days.... the intenet has to be the way to go now ....I feel for the shopkeepers they have a business to run and people to employ but we will be shopping more and more on line in places like Hong Kong I feel .... so does this make us bad people ?

[Bob T]

I think that depends..... If I bought something in a UK shop and listened to the shop owner moaning about the 2% drop in sales this year, then I would be very miffed if he was selling the same iem in his sale at 50% off just afterwards. Makes you wonder what his mark up was in the first place.

[Renaud]

Good question, no easy answers. High street record and book shops make most of their income from the top selling titles and not much from other books and CDs. Internet retailers of the same items make relatively little from the ‘top sellers’ but generate their income from selling back catalogue items.

Ottakars, who were a success story a few years back, were made less profitable because of the rise of internet book sales. Their merchant bankers encouraged them to set-up their own internet sales arm, however they found that purchasers would compare prices on several sites and always buy the cheapest - the margins were amazingly slim on the kinds of books heavily promoted by the publishers. So they changed the emphasis of their site to be a promotional tool.

I was sorry when Ottakars were bought by Waterstones as Ottakars had been staffed by literate and knowledgable people whilst Waterstones have been run by number crunchers since Tim Waterstone sold the business.

I try and make a point of buying new books from our local real book shop (who are reassuringly dippy) but I buy other books from the ‘new and used’ sections on Amazon. I buy CDs from Play.com or a second hand CD store in Berwick Street in Soho.

A couple of years back, on the morning of a day when the anarchists were going to ‘stop the city’, I was in this shop, before the politically motivated were due to gather at Oxford Circus. I was impressed to see how many out-of-town anarchists had made time for an hours quiet shopping before attempting to smash capitalism.

[Frederick]

Yes.... the Internet has to be the place for the best deal if you know what you want ....I have bought myself a powered Lawn King petrol mower 18in blade 4hp motor for less than £100 by finding a mower specialist on line ....I would normally have gone to the garden center and bought the same one there ...I might have saved enough for the ferry fare to take it over by shopping on line ....but... I would also hate to lose the garden center.

[Eos]

No we are not bad people for shopping online.

I'm sure there are some environmental advantages to not traipsing around towns with traffic in start/stop mode, not to mention many goods having only to be shipped once or twice between manufacturer & end user reducing logistic & warehousing costs.

Some shops, probably smaller ones, will suffer and some, again likely to be smaller ones, will become more specialised & thrive.

All markets operate on suppy and demand and these days that principle is on a global scale.

[woolybanana]

Small shops can also learn to function on E-bay and do very well. It is not just for auctions. But it may be illegal in France believe it or not.

[Christine Animal]

Apart from knowing what you want exactly, a particular item, don't you like to touch, feel and smell before purchasing ?

 

[woolybanana]

Much of what I buy is books, DVD's, some cook wear. Often I have seen something like it elsewhere. And clothes, mainly M n S for thre basics, but then I get some poor family member to bring the stuff over.

I reckon we will be buying over 50% online pretty soon. After all, it is a bit like the old Argos concept in a sense.

[Iceni]

[quote user="Christine Animal"]

Apart from knowing what you want exactly, a particular item, don't you like to touch, feel and smell before purchasing ?

[/quote]

Of course, you fondle the goods in a real shop, make a note of make and model that you prefer then go home and buy online.

John

not

[Baz]

I bought a up market Satnav on line recently for about £100 less than was available in the shops. I noticed 2 days after receiving the item that the internet company had reduced it by a further£50 and under the UK distance selling rules one can return any item up to 7 days after purchase. So the retailer was only to prepared give me a refund of £50, something that no shop would do.

Baz

[cassis]

Depends.  It doesn't make you a bad person.  If the product works then you're quids in if you get it cheaper on the net.  Whether it is wise in a country where aftersales service is generally poor (edited to remove mild profanity) is another question;  it's much easier to shout and physically threaten a

shopkeeper in person than a twazzock (edited to remove stronger profanity) on an email address who ignores you.

[Gluestick]

Why should one feel bad about saving money?

Quite obviously, one of the main reasons for patronising a certain retailer used to be service and product knowledge.

With few exceptions, in the UK for example, service and product knowledge don't exist much anymore! Thus objection vanished.

Really, all one is doing is not pay the retailer a huge mark up so that they can pay obscene local taxes (UBR), insurance, wages, mortgage/rent, heating bills out of sight, and all the unseen overhead costs of the vast array of red tape demanded by an EU and a UK bureacracy gone mad! Such as HSE; COSHH; Fire Regs; disability access, toilets etc; etc.

A chum has recently converted much of his now unwanted previous retail space into office accommodation: I could just not believe the hoops he had to jump through for conformity and compliance! And what it cost him!

The future is increasingly online: it's unavoidable; and with the state of the logistics industry, today, it's simple to ship goods almost anywhere to anywhere. UK Picking Warehouses, once a rarity are increasingly common place and add to this new dynamic.