How do you shops compete with internet shopping?

Answer 1

Over the coming decades it will be much more difficult for shops (called mortar and brick outlets) to compete with online outlets. The greater majority of shoppers still want to see, feel, and examine the items they are buying. They also want to buy a product and bring it home with them, instead of waiting for it to come. As newer generations of shoppers outnumber the current generations, they will be more accustomed to shopping on line and the cost of maintain a physical shop will cause them to disappear.

The phenomenon is not unlike the change that took place over the last half of the twentieth century, the change from shops individually owned and operated by local people to shopping malls and big box stores. There is a long list of items that, over the last twenty years or so, that one by one, I have been unable to buy from a local merchant in my town. There are still some out there, but for example, we have no bakery in my town so that I need to travel to a neighboring community to find one, and a neighboring community may have no local jeweler and need to travel here to find one.

One of the advantages that local merchants still have is that the big box stores and large mall outlets 'homogenize' a given product. If you are looking for clothing or patio furniture, the big stores have half dozen to a dozen styles to choose from. Local merchants can have choices as varied as the individuals that do the purchasing for their store. They also tend to have more products produced by local individuals.

The generation that has grown up over the last twenty years and the one who will grow up in the next twenty years will not know anything about the experience of shopping with local merchants. It will mean nothing to them. They will shop on line without thinking about it. It may even turn out that when the malls and the big box stores are no longer cost effective due to the growth of on line shopping, the local merchants will begin to reappear as the only means able to support 'in person' shopping and personal attention.