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I do pretty much all my buying online these days. Very rarely do I visit a store and it's usually if I specifically need to see a item in person before buying it.
Other than home depot/lowes, everything I buy comes via the brown truck
fast food can't be mailed, it will be around for years to come.
Experiments with robots and automatic dispensing machines are in advanced stages. Once an industry leader has (even limited) success with such systems, others will follow immediately.
I do pretty much all my buying online these days. Very rarely do I visit a store and it's usually if I specifically need to see a item in person before buying it.
Other than home depot/lowes, everything I buy comes via the brown truck
Same here. I usually wait until my order is large enough so I end up rarely paying shipping.
bad customer service and you can hardly find what you want in store. you have to go to their website to get it. why even have a brick and mortar store if you don't carry anything? lol
Experiments with robots and automatic dispensing machines are in advanced stages. Once an industry leader has (even limited) success with such systems, others will follow immediately.
They're already experimenting with drones delivering things to people.
Once it gets to a point where drones can be programmed to drop off at a certain address and return to base it's going to also hurt UPS, FedEx, etc.
So, am I one of the few who gets an unlikely number of "this item is temporarily out of stock" when I try to order online?
I recently went online to look for a few short sleeve blouses for work and found very few things I liked and few of those were in stock in the colors I wanted. I got up and went to the brick and mortar to get the items in the colors I wanted because they actually had them in the store. Had the same issue at Christmas, everything online was temporarily sold out but available in store.
The "ship to local store for free pickup" option is one that I find can make a nice compromise, as it allows me to take advantage of the convenience and variety of online retail while still supporting my local businesses. Of course I still have to have the time to run to the store to get the item when it arrives, and it's not usually an option that a true Mom and Pop operation can offer, but it's a nice alternative to constantly giving Amazon all my online business.
It makes no difference whether you're picking it up at the store or having it delivered to your home. Having something delivered to the store isn't "supporting a local business" at all if you're ordering/buying from a large national corpration like Home Depot. If you buy other stuff when you're in the store you're contributing tax dollars to your local economy, but your purchase money is going to the exact same place as the money you spent online.
It makes no difference whether you're picking it up at the store or having it delivered to your home. Having something delivered to the store isn't "supporting a local business" at all if you're ordering/buying from a large national corpration like Home Depot. If you buy other stuff when you're in the store you're contributing tax dollars to your local economy, but your purchase money is going to the exact same place as the money you spent online.
All of the above is true, but at least going to local stores supports employment of local people.
When I worked retail we were always understaffed after 3(which was prime time) because no one wanted to work the closing shift in any department. This was especially true during the summer time. Since there was always openings people on their applications would put that they could work nights and weekends. Then after about a month they would start saying "well I have to change my availability" and were quickly let go
Retail corporations have shifted away from properly staffing stores with full time employees to grossly under staffing with skeleton crews of uninsured part time employees who couldn't care less. To top it off, the part timers are supervised by managers who are paid salary and expected to work upwards of 70-80 hours per week in some cases. This is essentially the Wal-Mart business model and it spread like wild fire to companies everywhere. As you can see though, in the past few years it has been starting to backfire. I know for instance that there are a number of items I use that would be cheaper at Wal-Mart. On many occasions, I skip Wal-Mart simply because the shopping experience flat out sucks. Add free shipping from places like Amazon into the mix and there's zero reason to step into these stores.
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