The holiday shopping season is upon us, and the same question seems to come up in every conversation: "who goes to a store anymore?" Given the number of cars in the parking lots of most stores, and the traffic congestion around most retail clusters, the answer seems to be "quite a few people, actually."
This got me to musing about the brick-and-mortar retail industry, which e-commerce pundits have repeatedly declared to be a dead or dying channel, citing a few instances in which online commerce has effectively killed off brick and mortar (travel agencies, record stores, video rental). And yet, brick-and-mortar merchants persist.
It stands to reason that the advantages of the channel are still valued buy a significant number of consumers. And with that in mind, I've been musing on what those advantages might be - and have come up with a fairly good list:
- Immediate Possession
- Convenience of Browsing
- Inspection of Physical Goods
- Total Cost of Goods
- Customer Service
- Payment Flexibility
- Privacy
- No Spam
- Merchandise Returns
- After-Sale Support
- Customer Experience
Granted, some of these qualities are arguable, and many of them could be argued either way based on factors such as customer preferences, the item in question, or the vendor in question - and this may bear further reflection at a later time. I could probably write a blog entry on each of the items in the list but for the present one, my intention was simply to do a quick brain-dump of some of the factors that might lead a customer to prefer a brick-and-mortar outlet to online retail.
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