Christmas Shopping

I did it all in one day...but a messy day it was. Parking lines, traffic, lines in the stores. I read that retail sales were uber low this year. It made me wonder: why, then, are the lines in stores just as long? Shouldn't the lines be shorter if there are fewer people shopping?

The answer is both simple and complex - retailers have decided the way to compete with online shopping is to offer competitive pricing and the ability to see your purchase before it arrives. To offer the competitive pricing, they are hiring less employees to help out.

One reason people will purchase online is price, but another reason is efficiency. It is much quicker to order from a computer and get a package in the mail than it is to get in your car, drive to the store, buy an item, and bring it home. If you can spare the time waiting for the item to arrive in the mail, you save time spent finding and locating the item.

Soon it will become habit and will become affordable to purchase items online and return them easily if they do not work...the Netflix model, but applied to retail instead of video rentals. You need no more evidence than the vast expansion of Amazon.com's product offerings and the dual facts that retail is down, internet purchasing is up, to validate this hypothesis.

If retail expects to survive, they are going to need to figure out a way to compete by offering something online purchasing cannot. One route is to offer service - good , helpful service, like Nordstroms. Another angle would be expertise - retailers might want to get out of the mindset of being salesmen and act more like consultants...offering objective advice about fashion, style...kind of like a barber or hair stylist. Another option is to make shopping enjoyable. I think Mac stores are awfully fun to visit for all the gadgets and cool stuff. Or nice deli's that offer cheese samples that often encourage people to purchase cheese. It is down this road that retail must go to compete with online shopping. I look forward to it...competition makes things better - Blockbuster got rid of late fees thanks to Netflix. Soon, maybe shopping will become fun for me - although I doubt it.