|
I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I have zero problems with the whole showroom issue. Especially because it constantly goes both ways. I've often used Amazon and other online stores to do my research, and then gone out and done the buying locally.
And whether buying online or off, Amazon is always my first stop when choosing between different models of a product, because their reviews aggregate makes it very easy to narrow down my choices to a select few.
Amazon has spent a lot of money to get the kind of website and infrastructure that allows me to use them this way, so an argument could easily be made that what I'm doing is equally as wrong as using a local vendor as a showroom and then ordering from Amazon.
But I don't think either behaviour is wrong. It's just the way retail works in the modern world, and I think it would be a mistake to try to artificially impose restrictions on it in order to cling to the past. I'm not even that hardcore of a freemarket capitalist, no I consider myself left of center politically, I just have no sentimental attachment to the whole idea of maintaining a presence of local community merchants.
|