Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Overstatement of the Day

From Persona Non Data, who is generally interesting but much too given to the overly sweeping statement:
Increasingly all of us - not just those of us who have been checking our bank account and buying airline tickets online for years - will be buying everything online, at the best combination of pricing and free delivery, and all without dealing with the expense and hassle of traveling.
Oh, really? Even those of us who neither live in doorman buildings on the Upper West Side nor have someone staying home all day to accept packages?

Some things are scalable, some things are not. The majority of retail purchases will continue to be made in person -- whether or not they're made in "big box" stores (the dominance of which is a very recent development).

I'm old enough to remember when catalog retailing was going to kill the department store -- and I bet "Persona" is, as well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm trying hard to think of when the last time was that I bought something online that required me to stay home all day to "accept a package" (or that would have required me to to do had I not delivered it myself). The only thing I can think of is my car, preceded a few months earlier by a new dishwasher (which perforce had to be installed anyway).

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