> Consumer choice in physical stores is often limited by the ‘herd mentality’ of retailers who crowd hundreds of identical shops together and rarely attempt to

> Consumer choice in physical stores is often limited by the ‘herd mentality’ of retailers who crowd hundreds of identical shops together and rarely attempt to cater to niche markets Very, very true. It's one of the things about China that I totally don't understand. I've been in Shanghai and visited some of the "malls" with each of them having thousands of these tiny shops inside, everyone selling the exact same stuff as the next one. And I mean "the exact same stuff". The primary tool to differentiate yourself from the others seems to be the attempts at screaming louder than the shop next door. I mean, it's good for the inevitable price negotiation (just walk away, they'll most likely chase you and offer a much smaller price, and even if they don't, one out of the next 5 stores will definitely offer the exact same item so you can retry), but it severely limits the choices, and if there isn't a huge mall that specifically caters to whatever you currently need you may have a hard time getting whatever you want to buy. I can't make economic sense of this behavior from the point of the shopkeepers. Why be the 50th shop selling the exact same hats as the other 49 shops right next to you? Wouldn't it make sense to sell stuff that you can't get anywhere else in the vicinity? Is the demand for the weird hats you and all the other stores sell really at least 50 times higher than for anything else not being sold in the area?