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{"id":6750,"date":"2017-06-20T21:07:43","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T03:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6750"},"modified":"2017-06-21T10:04:34","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T16:04:34","slug":"blockbuster-borders-local-grocer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/06\/blockbuster-borders-local-grocer.html","title":{"rendered":"Blockbuster, Borders, your local grocer?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AWhole_Foods_Markham_Canada.jpg;$ <\/p>\n

So Amazon is buying Whole Foods<\/a>, and everyone is speculating that Amazon is on its way to becoming Buy N Large, selling everything and destroying its competition, and destroying\u00a0the local grocery store, so that in a few short years, we\u2019ll all be ordering our groceries online.<\/p>\n

Nevermind that this is the Peapod model (do all the pundits live in areas without Peapod?), but the few times I\u2019ve looked at them, I\u2019ve found them substantially more expensive than \u201cregular\u201d grocery stores, not even taking into account their delivery charge. \u00a0Maybe there\u2019s a certain demographic that is fairly indifferent to prices, or maybe Amazon really can do this more cheaply than Peapod, but I just can\u2019t picture Amazon being able to offer \u201cregular\u201d groceries at a price competitive with Meijer, not to mention Aldi, and I can\u2019t see them creating a new business model in which customers mentally differentiate between Amazon-ordered staples and perishables, or shoppers finding the convenience worth the added cost. \u00a0Not to mention the issues around picking out exactly which 5 apples you want, or whether the almost-past-date bagged salad looks good enough to take a chance on \u2014 items which, again, I suppose, are irrelevant to folks with high disposable income and small grocery needs (singles or partnered without kids).<\/p>\n

And there is nothing magical about e-commerce. \u00a0Just because one orders something via a computer, doesn\u2019t automatically make it more magically modern and futuristic. \u00a0Why should the model of \u201corder online, deliver in small quantities\u201d make more sense than \u201cdeliver in large quantities to locations easily accessible to many consumers, who can select their choices in person\u201d for items which are not so specialized as to make a retail location unfeasible (and which would have been a mail-order catalog in the past)? \u00a0After all, ordering items online, and using the internet to facilitate making additional descriptive information, reviews, etc., available, is high-tech. \u00a0Delivery via UPS vans, not so much.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, to the extent that people have flocked to e-commerce (and that for multiple reasons, including the willingness of those retailers to sell at a loss to gain a customer base \u2014 see this Forbes piece on Amazon<\/a>, and the exemption, in many cases, from sales taxes \u2014 remember, that\u2019s 10% in Illinois), it has had some genuinely negative effects.<\/p>\n

Consider Blockbuster. \u00a0They got hammered by Redbox, for your everyday video rental needs, and by Netflix, for people who want to binge-watch. \u00a0There was still a demographic that patronized Blockbuster, or Hollywood Video, or Family Video, and wanted a greater selection of videos than Redbox offered, but don\u2019t want to go through the preplanning that it takes to get Netflix videos in queue. \u00a0(Does it still work like that? \u00a0Or is it all streaming now?)<\/p>\n

Or bookstores. \u00a0Amazon is great if you have a specific book in mind that you\u2019re looking to have arrive in a couple day\u2019s time. \u00a0If you just care about the most popular titles, you\u2019re just fine with your generic discount store: \u00a0Target, Walmart, Meijers, etc. \u00a0But if you want to browse, in general, or want to choose the best of several available options (guidebooks for a vacation, for instance), you need a real bricks-and-mortar bookstore, of which there are a declining number \u2014 in my neck of the woods (and that\u2019s a suburb with lots of easily-accessible shopping), that means Barnes and Noble, a 15 minute drive without traffic. \u00a0And that\u2019s it (except for Half-Price Books). \u00a0If they go, it substantially changes the way book-buying happens, and takes away options that are very useful to a great many people.<\/p>\n

Or clothing. \u00a0There\u2019s surely got to be a massive number of returns for online-sold clothing \u2014 at least for women\u2019s clothes, and for fitted clothing. \u00a0I suppose men\u2019s clothes, which are reliably-sized and without much variation in style, or muumuus, or maybe maternity clothes, can be reliably bought online. \u00a0I guess yoga pants also fit in that category, since, so far as I can tell, they just fit all women equally poorly. \u00a0But for those of us who have to try on every dress in stock to find one that looks moderately acceptable, it makes no sense.<\/p>\n

But, then again, I still have a subscription to a home-delivered, paper newspaper.<\/p>\n

Now, if you\u2019ll excuse me, I have some kids I have to go chase off my lawn!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AWhole_Foods_Markham_Canada.jpg; By ChadPerez49 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"