Offline shopping is rather awful. The habit of going to a physical grocery store, wading through products I mostly would never purchase, wading through isles I mostly have no interest in, waiting in very long lines behind people using insufficient change, with insufficient funds on their payment cards, malfunctioning mobile payment apps, or excessively complete family gatherings is not one I have ever enjoyed. Regarding non-food purchases, there is even less reason to shop offline these days. I buy absolutely zero electronics in person, when NewEgg, EBay, Amazon, and OEMs provide anything I want at a much lower price and greater hardware and software freedom than is available in any carrier store, or Best Buy. Clothing I can get on Amazon easily, and yes, I have figured out how to make it fit. You can even purchase vehicles online at a much cheaper rate than in-person, and also weed out sketchy personalities quickly.
I also lower my impulse buying by not being in a space with strategic placement of brand-name goods, or checkout isles. I also don’t really spend any more, because there is much greater competition online than in person in a medium-sized city. I’d assume such behaviour reduces the incentive of local businesses to spend money wastefully on “atmosphere,” rent, and hype in redundant boutique and specialty shops, and transfer that effort into getting me a quality product.
People love to hate the likes of Bezos and I’m sure also Ma, but I don’t have much of a problem with the man. Perhaps it’s because Amazon is based in my hometown, perhaps its many bad experiences with incompetent or cognitively limited employment at brick-and-mortar retailers. Alibaba has costs which are quite difficult be beat (except by Temu), while Amazon has very high quality Solimo branded things at substantially lower prices than the likes of Target or Office Depot. It’s hard to feel the same way about WalMart once you’ve actually been inside a WalMart, and I assume in a few years hating WalMart will be awfully passé when the business starts to go the way of Toys-R-Us, or Sears.
I do buy from independent online businesses as well. I have purchased computer hardware from Purism and Pine64, and foods from Barnacle Foods and Maine Coast. That’s not something I am going to do for every sector of my life, and there is place for aggregators like Amazon. If someone else can create a decent comptetitor to Amazon domestically, that would be terrific; Jet.com didn’t make it. But AliExpress has Temu, and America would certainly benefit from a second Amazon. Maybe call it…Sacramento™?