Consumer Thoughts

O’Reilly has an interesting article up right now about shopping online vs. in brick-and-mortar stores, the crux of which is this:

Think about it for a minute: the retailer pays rent, orders and stocks the product, pays salespeople. You take advantage of all those services, and then give your money to someone else who can give you a better price because they don’t incur the cost of those services you just used. Not only is this unfair; it’s short-sighted, because it will only be so long before that retailer closes his or her doors, and you can no longer make use of those services you enjoy.

A very good point indeed.