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> But there’s a reason that we used to have shoe stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, bookstores, and all the rest: Those specialized retail spaces allow pr

> But there’s a reason that we used to have shoe stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, bookstores, and all the rest: Those specialized retail spaces allow products, and the people with knowledge about them, to engage in specialized ways of finding, choosing, and purchasing them. There's a reason why so much commerce has moved online in general and to Amazon in particular: We often value price and convenience and oodles of consumer reviews and easy access to competition and related info more than we value meat space salespeople with specialized knowledge laying on personalized sales pressure. Not always. I drove for three hours to shop for an office chair in a brick and mortar store, because I had to actually try it before paying the big bucks. But often enough to remake the economy.

NikolaNovak 8y ago
It's a matter of trust as well. My parents generation, now in the 70's, has this implicit trust in salespeople. They know "in principle" that there are "bad apples", but if a salesperson shakes their hand, looks them in the eye, and says "Of course Mr. <Insert name>, we'll take care of you", they buy it wholesale. Which is how my dad bought $600 tires for $1800 at a dealership, a $1200 "DSLR camera" which was actually a superzoom point and shoot, a wired phone headset which was actually wireless headphones with no boom, etc. I have basically zero trust in the "specialized retail stores with specialized sales people". Any time I geek out a little bit about any retail area, I learn the 101 ways they have and do scam you, and my trust erodes further. A specialized expensive shoe store swore my shoes I bought specifically for air travel don't have metal shims in them; of course they do. The electronic stores are never staffed with people who know more than I do, or frequently anything at all other than to push extended warranty. Small car maintenance store I've dealt with regularly for 15 years have turned out to be skimming and scamming once I learned more about their product and service, all the while greeting me warmly by name and "taking care of me". And yes, my dad and his friends still go to them. So yes, bring on the faceless online warehouse. I feel safer there - or at least, am better equipped to determine fake/counterfeit/exploitative than I am in person. For all the decades that Amazon and the like had to develop methods to scam us, in-person salespeople had centuries, and I ain't winning that game.
- yholio 8y ago
  In the small business dominated world of 40 years ago trust was a fundamental economic asset. A bad seller would immediately get a bad reputation and it would be known around the community. People trusted each other because that's how society has worked for millennia, to the point of tribalism, we are never allowed to scam "our" people for we might be ostracized and literally be in mortal peril outside the tribe. A handshake and a look in the eye says: "I'm staking my family's livelihood on this". Then the tech revolution happened and took the corporatist economic model to massive new levels. Large capital owners could more effectively circumvent the lack of social capital (trust) by investing in technology. Communication tools allowed them to better manage sprawling business empires and reach the consumer directly. The mom&pop gave way to the franchise and the retail chain, it's social capital was undercut by media-induced branding and billion dollar advertising campaigns. For the national chain, it's largely irrelevant if some old guy got suckered into buying crap by an underpaid employee looking to make a commission. He might complain to his neighbors but unless the media takes an interest, it's not an existential threat to the corporation with national level PR and advertising. The chain has other things to worry about, like expanding faster than the competition and hiring even more cheap & sleazy guys capable of producing income. The end game of this brave new world is precisely the "everything store" against which no mom&pop can compete. Our generation instinctively mistrusts the corporate drone regardless of it's physical or online incarnation. Your father is the product of a different social arrangement.
  - davidgay 8y ago
    > In the small business dominated world of 40 years ago trust was a fundamental economic asset. A bad seller would immediately get a bad reputation and it would be known around the community. Sorry, this is bogus. Salesmen for electronic goods have been terrible at least since the 70s - my father, who designed ICs used in TVs, used to rant about their incompetence and bald-faced lies... My assumption is that they've always been awful.
    - roymurdock 8y ago
      bigger point is that communities and tribes have gotten larger at least in the US, breaking down once strong barriers of trust (people becoming more numbers than neighbors)
tjr225 8y ago
> There's a reason why so much commerce has moved online in general and to Amazon in particular: We often value price and convenience and oodles of consumer reviews and easy access to competition and related info more than we value meat space salespeople with specialized knowledge laying on personalized sales pressure. I've stopped shopping on amazon for years now and perhaps the best thing they've done is make the online shopping experience better on every other website, purely out of necessity. I think any convenience in amazon has an advantage with is mostly perceived at this point. Also, their review system had become so huge and untrustworthy even the stars next to an item are basically meaningless.
- hirundo 8y ago
  > Also, their review system had become so huge and untrustworthy even the stars next to an item are basically meaningless. I agree, but still find big value in reviews, partly because I focus heavily on the more trustworthy part: the bad reviews. If they convince me I move on. But sometimes they're complaints about things I don't care about, or they don't rise above the baseline background bad-review radiation. Mostly though it's a way to learn about aspects of a product that are crucial to its use but absent from the marketing materials. E.g. I found out in a review that I couldn't use a piece of plumbing hardware because I donn't have enough water pressure for it. It can be quite hard to discover this kind of thing from the maker or seller.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
But people that flip companies, and large companies focused solely on profit, etc., realised they could do away with subject-knowledgable sales people and simply have good sellers who tell you the highest margin goods are the best. It works too, you can put an established business down by robbing their sales for a couple of years pretending your product is better. By then there's no [affordable] quality option available. Plus, the morally corrupt owners make oodles more money; inspiring others to do likewise. Greed feeds its self.
thirdsun 8y ago
It's not just price. My problem is that brick and mortar stores often simply don't have the selection nor the knowledge I'd expect. Of course the alternative doesn't have to be Amazon - there are countless shops that serve specific categories and niches way better than Amazon or your local store, if you even have one, ever could.

NikolaNovak 8y ago

It's a matter of trust as well. My parents generation, now in the 70's, has this implicit trust in salespeople. They know "in principle" that there are "bad apples", but if a salesperson shakes their hand, looks them in the eye, and says "Of course Mr. <Insert name>, we'll take care of you", they buy it wholesale. Which is how my dad bought $600 tires for $1800 at a dealership, a $1200 "DSLR camera" which was actually a superzoom point and shoot, a wired phone headset which was actually wireless headphones with no boom, etc. I have basically zero trust in the "specialized retail stores with specialized sales people". Any time I geek out a little bit about any retail area, I learn the 101 ways they have and do scam you, and my trust erodes further. A specialized expensive shoe store swore my shoes I bought specifically for air travel don't have metal shims in them; of course they do. The electronic stores are never staffed with people who know more than I do, or frequently anything at all other than to push extended warranty. Small car maintenance store I've dealt with regularly for 15 years have turned out to be skimming and scamming once I learned more about their product and service, all the while greeting me warmly by name and "taking care of me". And yes, my dad and his friends still go to them. So yes, bring on the faceless online warehouse. I feel safer there - or at least, am better equipped to determine fake/counterfeit/exploitative than I am in person. For all the decades that Amazon and the like had to develop methods to scam us, in-person salespeople had centuries, and I ain't winning that game.

yholio 8y ago
In the small business dominated world of 40 years ago trust was a fundamental economic asset. A bad seller would immediately get a bad reputation and it would be known around the community. People trusted each other because that's how society has worked for millennia, to the point of tribalism, we are never allowed to scam "our" people for we might be ostracized and literally be in mortal peril outside the tribe. A handshake and a look in the eye says: "I'm staking my family's livelihood on this". Then the tech revolution happened and took the corporatist economic model to massive new levels. Large capital owners could more effectively circumvent the lack of social capital (trust) by investing in technology. Communication tools allowed them to better manage sprawling business empires and reach the consumer directly. The mom&pop gave way to the franchise and the retail chain, it's social capital was undercut by media-induced branding and billion dollar advertising campaigns. For the national chain, it's largely irrelevant if some old guy got suckered into buying crap by an underpaid employee looking to make a commission. He might complain to his neighbors but unless the media takes an interest, it's not an existential threat to the corporation with national level PR and advertising. The chain has other things to worry about, like expanding faster than the competition and hiring even more cheap & sleazy guys capable of producing income. The end game of this brave new world is precisely the "everything store" against which no mom&pop can compete. Our generation instinctively mistrusts the corporate drone regardless of it's physical or online incarnation. Your father is the product of a different social arrangement.
- davidgay 8y ago
  > In the small business dominated world of 40 years ago trust was a fundamental economic asset. A bad seller would immediately get a bad reputation and it would be known around the community. Sorry, this is bogus. Salesmen for electronic goods have been terrible at least since the 70s - my father, who designed ICs used in TVs, used to rant about their incompetence and bald-faced lies... My assumption is that they've always been awful.
  - roymurdock 8y ago
    bigger point is that communities and tribes have gotten larger at least in the US, breaking down once strong barriers of trust (people becoming more numbers than neighbors)

tjr225 8y ago

> There's a reason why so much commerce has moved online in general and to Amazon in particular: We often value price and convenience and oodles of consumer reviews and easy access to competition and related info more than we value meat space salespeople with specialized knowledge laying on personalized sales pressure. I've stopped shopping on amazon for years now and perhaps the best thing they've done is make the online shopping experience better on every other website, purely out of necessity. I think any convenience in amazon has an advantage with is mostly perceived at this point. Also, their review system had become so huge and untrustworthy even the stars next to an item are basically meaningless.

hirundo 8y ago
> Also, their review system had become so huge and untrustworthy even the stars next to an item are basically meaningless. I agree, but still find big value in reviews, partly because I focus heavily on the more trustworthy part: the bad reviews. If they convince me I move on. But sometimes they're complaints about things I don't care about, or they don't rise above the baseline background bad-review radiation. Mostly though it's a way to learn about aspects of a product that are crucial to its use but absent from the marketing materials. E.g. I found out in a review that I couldn't use a piece of plumbing hardware because I donn't have enough water pressure for it. It can be quite hard to discover this kind of thing from the maker or seller.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

But people that flip companies, and large companies focused solely on profit, etc., realised they could do away with subject-knowledgable sales people and simply have good sellers who tell you the highest margin goods are the best. It works too, you can put an established business down by robbing their sales for a couple of years pretending your product is better. By then there's no [affordable] quality option available. Plus, the morally corrupt owners make oodles more money; inspiring others to do likewise. Greed feeds its self.

thirdsun 8y ago

It's not just price. My problem is that brick and mortar stores often simply don't have the selection nor the knowledge I'd expect. Of course the alternative doesn't have to be Amazon - there are countless shops that serve specific categories and niches way better than Amazon or your local store, if you even have one, ever could.