Moral/ethical issue here, in that you’re using resources that the store pays for but then buying it cheaper from someone who can sell for less for the very reason that he doesn’t have to expend those resources.
As I see it, there are 3 general situations:
[ol]
[li]If I’ve asked advice from a salesperson, then I feel obligated to buy the product from that store rather than elsewhere.[/li][li]If I’m shopping for something else and happen to notice an unrelated different type of product, then I have no qualms about buying it elsewhere.[/li][li]If I go to the store specifically to browse the selection and thereby educate myself about what’s out there but don’t take any time from the salespeople, then I feel somewhat conflicted about it, but lean to feeling like I should buy it there anyway.[/li][li]An exception to #3 above might be if I went to the store in good faith intending to buy the product there but then was surprised to see that the price difference was a lot more than I had expected.[/li][/ol]
I have no qualms whatsoever about buying online in any of the scenario you’ve stated. I have gone to stores and made the purchase of the exact same item online while still in the store.
If I’m in a store and they have what I want, I’m not leaving the store to buy the exact same thing on-line. Conversely, if I see something on-line I want, I’m not shutting down my computer and heading to the store. If I find what I want, wherever I find it is where I’m buying it. Although I’ve never checked, I always assume any savings that might be possible will be outweighed by time and hassle.
For some reason I find it comes up a lot with home repairs and the like. There are all sorts of ingenuous tools and products that you might not be aware of - or at least familiar with - and this makes shopping for them online somewhat difficult. So you head down to Lowes or HD and see what they have out there. You can almost always get the stuff cheaper on line, and if you’re not in a rush it’s convenient to do it that way. But to use the stores this way and then turn around and buy from a guy who is cheaper because he doesn’t have the very overhead that you just took advantage of doesn’t sit well with me.
Same here. I often shop online, find what I want…and then go to Ebay to buy the same thing used, for half the price. I often go to stores to I can feel a product, heft it, kick the doors and slam the tires…and then go to Amazon or Ebay and buy it for much less than the store price.
These are not good times for brick-and-mortar stores. I foresee a role for “showrooms” rather than stores.
OP: there is no moral/ethical issue here because a huge number of people do the opposite: they check reviews at Amazon and then buy it at a brick and mortar store.
It’s a problem for small specialty stores, like dance stories. Dance shoes, especially pointe shoes, are expensive and have to be fitted. It’s apparently depressingly common for dancers to go to a brick and mortar dance store, get professionally fitted for pointe shoes which can take an hour of the fitters time, or more, and once they know what brand and size shoe works for them, turn around and buy it for less online. What’s the big deal, you say? Enough of that and the dance store will go out of business or stop selling pointe shoes, and then dancers will have nowhere to get fitted. And self-fitting pointe shoes on line is a bad, bad idea, especially if you want to keep your feet undamaged.
I hope you told the salesperson ahead of time that you had no intention of buying anything from them before you took up a lot of their time helping you.
If you don’t buy from the brick and motor stores they will go out of business. We’ve lost all the good hardware stores in my city. We’re in the process of losing car stereo stores. I could make a list but it appears few people care.
I go completely out of my way to “shop locally”. I will spend hours and gallons of gas to give my local stores a chance to have my business, but I can’t get what I want and then, ding, another Amazon deal goes down. I really, really try.
No, the hardware stores lost a huge amount of business to Home Depot/Lowes/Menards… on one hand and Walmart… on the other–it wasn’t Amazon and other online that caused them a lot of damage.
I do my best effort to go brick-and-mortar, but this doesn’t extend to paying excessively high prices.
The music store around the block from me is where I have bought my music gear for the past 30 years, and whenever I find something interesting they look it up online in front of me and match the best price. I bought an American Standard P-bass last year for the same price as I could get it online, but I picked it out, played it, and had it set up correctly.
There’s a camera store in PA called Allen’s Camera that has all kinds of pro gear–they will match whatever prices B&H/Adorama/Amazon have for photo gear. Again, I buy from the store I can browse in. And they have a cool supply of used gear. And they will ship the box to my NJ home for free so it’s not an in-state purchase, even though I am in the store picking it out.
But if they have a camera for $200 more than B&H? No way! Loyalty only goes so far, and if they aren’t competitive, then I’m not going to buy from them.
In these threads I always post a rant about Barnes & Noble where I found a couple of nice books that cost about $50, but I found the same books on their own website for about half of that. I asked the manager to match the web price and she refused, telling me all of the benefits of brick and mortar, while I rolled my eyes and said “But the website says Barnes and Noble… you want to use the same name to get customers, but then deny you know the website once price is discussed? You want to have your cake and eat it too?”
Any store that pulls that nonsense (not matching their own website) is not trying hard enough. For the record, Walmart doesn’t match their web prices either.
You must go to different stores than the rest of us; most stores are almost completely self-service anymore–and it’s usually quite difficult to find someone to help you.
You’re introducing extra terms here that some of us never specified. I said I’d go to the store to examine goods before buying them, without any need for a salesman’s help.
Also, asking a salesman one or two questions is not “taking up a lot of his time.”
Also, salesmen know damn well that many, many people shop without buying. They’re used to it. The idea that anyone would need to explain is silly. (And, in fact, many of us actually do say, “Well, right now I’m just looking.” Salesmen are perfectly cool with this.)